In 2013, when Instagram was barely a year old and was not yet fully anchored in our purchasing behavior, George Clooney, the star of Ocean's Eleven, founded his tequila Casamigos, now omnipresent. Ten years later, it became the fastest growth spirits in the world, and Clooney separated in 2018 for a billion dollars.

At the time, Americans were already starting to take a taste for Tequila, the high -end brands that experienced growth of 823 % in the past ten years. But the success of Casamigos can also be attributed to the status of Clooney as a Hollywood star at a time when cinema stars dominated cultural conversation. After Argo and The Ides of March, Clooney was an icon of industry in the age flower.

According to Andrea Hernandez, expert in current consumer goods (CPG) based in Honduras, who heads the Snaxshot online community focused on snacks, the boom in brands led by creators to do less with the conventional "vedettar" than With the fact that today's influencers are intrinsically more attentive to their audience than traditional stars were in the past.

It is a symptom of the evolution of the relationship of society, in particular young people, with celebrity, authenticity and the community which becomes more and more inherent in the consumption of brands.

"With celebrities, there have always been these levels and this distance between them and their audience," said Hernandez to Paper. "Many creators today learn from celebrity brands, in particular those who have failed. They know that it is not enough to attract the attention of a big name. You have to adapt your product to his audience ".

What is closest to the miraculous history of Casamigos today is the tequila 818 of the star of reality TV and model Kendall Jenner. Although Kendall Jenner is a superstar in its own right, she and her sister Kylie, a billionaire behind Kylie Cosmetics, are where they are precisely because they have been able to go from celebrity to the screen to the creation of Online content.

In recent years, while consumers of generation Z have reached adulthood, brands founded by content creators - even those that are smaller than the Kardashian - have started to tackle the traditional brand domination celebrity. Take a recent example: the celebrities of the Net Logan Paul and KSI launched Prime, a highly anticipated energy drink that sowed overwhelming in supermarkets in the United States and abroad.

"I think that people don’t pay as much attention to celebrities having their own brand anymore, because, let’s be honest, Every Celeb has one or multiple," Says Evan Burns, Co-Founder of Miles Teller’s Long drink and tiktkers Bryce Hall and Josh Richards’ Ani Energy. "What’s the Edge on Another Person Launching A Tequila? Creator Brands Have Tapped Into Being Authentic and Creating Content thatir Customers Love. ”Indeed, it’s no long enough to build notororiety around a name. Most Successful Creators Nowadays are not just Famous: they’re constructing ENTIRE UNIVERSES THAT HAVE ROOM for their followers to participate. This is evident in the marketing for ani, which set up walmart Meet-And-Greets with Hall and Richards to Promote the Drink’s Launch in 400 Stores.

This does not mean that other traditional celebrities no longer launch brands - they do it more than ever. Dozens of actors and singers are launching, in particular in the category of food and drinks, where the entrance barrier is lower than in those of beauty or fashion. In 2022 alone, we had an aperitif without alcohol of self of Katy Perry, the TBH hazelnut spread from Noah Schnapp and the mixtures for pastries by Chrissy Teigen - an expansion of his Empire Cravings by Chrissy Teigen. And in 2023, even Jennifer Lopez embarked on the game with Delola, a bottled Spritz, although she does not drink.

But within the consumer products industry, these brands are often mentioned in the same breath as the star of YouTube and Gen-Zer Emma Chamberlain, who launched her eponymous coffee brand Chamberlain Coffee in 2019 and who closed Last year a round table of 7 million dollars. There is also MrBeast Burger, the homonym of the Youtubeur Mrbeast, whose annual turnover is estimated at $ 100 million. Mr. Hernandez, who invented the neologism "Packed products for celebrities", has since created a new term: "Packed products for creators": "products wrapped by creators".

Beyond Launching Their Own Brands, Creators TODAY ALSO HAVE INCREASED ACCESS TO Brand Partnerships With Much Larger Entities Who Are Looking Specifically to Tap Into More Niche Audiences. Take, for examination, a recent collaboration between food influencers ewa and jeromy ko of Life name With spam, a mainstream brand Whose Ingredient Happens to Carry Nostalgia for Asian Americans. In 2022, name Life released a successful Clothing collaboration With the brand. "Creators are unique in that they’ve GROWN TOGETHER With their audience - There's an Alignment of Interests or passions that can make it easier to mutually connect over brands or product," Explains Ewa. “Our brand is very centered surround food; Particularly giving a platform to many asian based recipes, culture and stories. Spam is a part of many asian cultures due to its history, so the connection with not only us, but also for audience, was very natural. ”

"Creators often have extraordinary ideas which they develop in the context of a dialogue with their audience," said Khan. "However, for many years, the creators have not had access to solid partner operators to give life to their ideas.

"We may only talk about the success of Kylie, George Clooney or Jessica Alba, but it seems that the teams of hundreds of people are unknown behind the scenes day after day," adds-t -he. "The creators did not have access to operators of this quality before 2021.

Ms. Hernandez also cites the content generated by users around Prime, where we see the drink during minor league tournaments, with adolescents posting images of their trophies next to the bottle. This type of membership, she says, cannot be reproduced without a strong alignment with the public. "For generation Z, authenticity is the new luxury," she explains, adding that Emma Chamberlain started as Vlogger on YouTube by sharing recipes from Cold Brew that his fans wanted to reproduce.

"Anyone with an audience has a brand," adds Jenny Gyllander, founder of Thingtesting, a known assessment platform to identify emerging brands born on the Internet. "No matter whether you are Neiman Marcus, Jennifer Aniston or a rising star from Tiktok, someone will trust and follow what you are doing. The channels are new and the influencers are new, but there is no shortcut for Establish confidence with consumers.

It should be noted that this content-to-commerce pipeline reaches new heights thanks, in part, to new modes of commercial and operational support for small creators. According to Zawwar Khan, former director of the Pepsico brand who works today as a consultant for creators of current consumer products, he was simply not possible in the past for creators to take off their ideas.