Authentic lands in your inbox every Tuesday, with the deals worth studying, the strategies worth stealing, and the shifts worth watching… all from the people building the brand-creator economy from the inside. If someone forwarded you this newsletter, you can find us at liveauthentic.io.
Trending The Market
Gap Is Turning Its Employees Into Creators
Gap Inc. is opening up its creator program to all of its employees.
The Big Pitch: By empowering employees to become creators, Gap is tapping the people who know the brand best to be authentic ambassadors. That provides endless opportunities for content to find new audiences and potentially go viral.
The Fine Print: Gap’s creator program — which was open to creators over 18 and who had at least 1,000 followers — has already reached 154 million people since launching in October.
Now, Gap wants to empower those who already evangelize its brands to join.
Anyone in Gap Inc.’s corporate, distribution, and retail staff can apply.
The employees can elect to promote Gap, Old Navy, Athleta, or Banana Republic.
Chosen employees can choose affiliate opportunities across newsletters, social media channels, branded content, product storytelling, and creator spotlights.
The Analysis: Damon Berger, senior vice president of marketing shared services at Gap Inc., said that expanding the program to employees gives them a path to become influencers, allowing them to earn commission and product. On top of their hourly rate or salary, that’s an enticing deal.
The economics of that are playing across the brand-creator economy.
Emarketer found that US brands will spend about 45% of their influencer budgets this year on micro-influencers (those with under 20,000 followers). That’s because of how algorithmic changes are now favoring smaller creators.
That has established a new middle class of influencers — their high engagement rates makes them ideal for brand deals and affiliate links.
By and large, Gap’s sales have been on the upswing this past year thanks to revenue boosts at its namesake brand, Old Navy, and Banana Republic. Expect the company to keep a close eye on how employee-creators supercharge their returns… the good kind, that is.
Together with Consumable
Audio For The Outcomes Era
Most media plans treat audio as a few line items: a streaming buy, maybe a podcast sponsorship. But the audio ecosystem is far bigger than that… and much of it is going untouched.
Mobile apps, addressable podcast audiences, and creator-led content extended across platforms — these are spaces where attention is intentional and trust already exists.
Consumable opens up that ecosystem.
The tool helps you reach 210M+ Comscore-verified monthly users across formats and channels.
It’s powered by listener intelligence, precision targeting, and modern identity infrastructure.
Every audio impression is measurable, addressable, and tied to real outcomes.
Consumable lets brands reach audiences wherever they listen, with the same precision and accountability marketers expect from their best digital channels.
Through immersive ad experiences that combine audio, visuals, and interactivity, brands can finally turn listening into engagement and business impact.
Building The Stack
Saylor Sets Up A Creator Studio
Marketing agency Saylor — which counts blue-chip brands like Disney, Netflix, and Hilton as clients — is going deeper into the brand-creator economy with a new creator studio. Dubbed “Fleet,” the studio will work with creators from the ground up on social-first content, including casting, development, and production. The goal is that creator insights will help produce the most authentic campaigns… transforming talent from ambassadors to business partners.
MrBeast’s Brand-Deal Points Get Discovered
If you’ve ever wondered what a brand deal with the biggest creator in the world looks like, newly-filed court documents have provided a rare and detailed breakdown… at least if you’re looking at his follower count from 2024 (about half of his 511 million YouTube subscribers today). Sponsored segments on his main channel cost about $2.5 million, while buying a YouTube Short or TikTok video was half a million dollars. It goes to show how much you need to have budgeted to work with a creator at that scale.
Roblox Creators Get A Boost With A Beat
Open-world gaming platforms like Roblox, Fortnite, and Minecraft are slowly turning into creator playgrounds similar to traditional social-media sites. Roblox is helping usher in the influence by partnering with indie-music distributor Too Lost. The deal will allow creators to add music from artists such as Teddy Swims and Alex Warren to their experiences. Considering how inclusion on a viral TikTok can send songs to the top of the charts, prepare for labels to now consider Roblox in their social budgets.
Would you consider launching a creator program for your employees?
Social Updates
Meta is letting Threads users chat privately with its AI in their DMs.
Reddit is testing a “video” version of the platform that would allow users to watch videos and listen to posts.
Snapchat is banning fully AI-generated content from its Spotlight platform, which focuses on surfacing videos from creators and studios.
YouTube is finally making its UI a little more clean and minimalist.
Wrapping Up
Another week in the books. We'll be back in your inbox next Tuesday with more fresh insights.
Programming for the Authentic Forum is going beyond our wildest expectations, and the room we're building in New York this November is shaping up to be something you won’t want to miss. If you're behind a brand-creator partnership worth the room's attention, we want to hear from you. Submit your work for consideration at authenticcall.aivanta.io. Submissions close this Friday. The right fits will earn a speaking slot at Authentic this fall.
And if you know someone this event wouldn't be complete without, a brand doing the work others are still trying to figure out, or a creator whose partnerships belong in front of this room, drop us a line directly at [email protected]. Time is running out.
See you next week.
— The Authentic Team