Even the best creators find Star Power fleeting – The Hollywood Reporter

VidCon, the flagship gathering of creators and influencers, was set to make a triumphant return to Anaheim after its two-year COVID-19-related hiatus. And this year, TikTok – the once-upstart platform that has soared during the pandemic to more than a billion active users – took over from YouTube as the conference’s main sponsor, promising the presence of top TikTok creators and an injection of new energy into the 12-year-old conference.

The creator economy has exploded in recent years, with the size of the market of consumers spending money on creators expected to grow from $9.8 billion to more than $18 billion, according to an October report. 2021 from UTA. And that growth has been accompanied by massive budgets from brands striking lucrative deals with talent and sustained interest from burgeoning creators looking to monetize their followers and turn their content into a business. U.S. influencer marketing spend expected exceed $4 billion this year, according to Insider Intelligence, and big brands like Levi’s and Louis Vuitton have partnered with talent like Emma Chamberlain, while the NFL and energy drink Celsius have tapped rising stars like Katie Feeney for partnerships.

But as much as the creator-focused industry has grown, this year’s VidCon offered an unwavering reminder of how a creator’s career — and, by extension, relevance and star power — can fade as quickly as it explodes.

To illustrate this, VidCon kicked off on June 22 with the dethroning of TikTok’s reigning queen, Charli D’Amelio. That evening, as star designers gathered at the Hyatt Hotel near the Anaheim Convention Center to check out the beauty salons of platforms like TikTok, YouTube, and Meta, Khaby Lame — the Senegalese and Italian comedian best known for his deadpan, wordless videos and wide-eyed reactions — has become the most-followed creator on TikTok, pushing D’Amelio from the spot she’s held for about two years . (At press time, Blade has 144.5 million subscribers compared to D’Amelio’s 142.9 million.)

The following day, D’Amelio appeared on stage for a sponsored chat with creator Brandon Baum for Lightricks. But instead of being a showpiece event set in the convention center’s main ballroom, especially given TikTok’s role as VidCon’s main sponsor, the conversation took place on a stage – sponsored by Spotify – which was hidden at the back of the showroom, competing with the chatter coming from the dozens of brand stands set up in the same hall.

That’s not to say fans haven’t lined up for a meet and greet with D’Amelio or that the creator’s ventures — which now include a perfume, clothing line, reality show on Hulu, and major brand partnerships. with companies like Dunkin’, among others – have declined in any way. But the fervor around top talent from VidCons’ past, where screams from fans were the norm, felt especially muted for a creator with such a large audience as D’Amelio’s. And when asked what his advice to other creators was when appearing on stage, there was a sense that perhaps D’Amelio was tired of it all.

“Don’t get attached to anything specific,” said D’Amelio, who initially went viral on TikTok with videos of her dancing. “It’s not worth always having to do one thing. I feel like if you do this, you can only do it so long until you get bored and want a change. And if you’re so used to creating only one type of content, you may feel trapped.

As for losing his top spot to Lame – who is being replaced by Milan-based Iron Corp. and recently signed a multi-year deal with Hugo Boss – D’Amelio assured fans that there was “no bad blood”. “I had number 1 for two years. I feel like it’s time someone else got that spot,” D’Amelio said. “It’s great to know that someone else gets that spot – someone who’s kind and a good person and loves what they do. … I wouldn’t want to hand it over to anyone.” other.”

D’Amelio’s presence at VidCon also highlighted the absence of other creators who have been major attractions at VidCons in recent years, including YouTube creators like David Dobrik and his Vlog Squad, Jake and Logan Paul, Tyler Oakley , Jenna Marbles, Grace Helbig, Philip DeFranco and Casey Neistat. The conference also drew a noticeably smaller crowd this year with 50,000 in-person attendees compared to 75,000 attendees at the 2019 conference, though COVID likely influenced the drop in attendance.

Marked Brownlee, a tech critic with more than 15 million YouTube subscribers, describes the creators’ careers as similar to those of professional athletes. “A lot of people want to be a professional athlete. But when you look at it, the life cycle of a professional athlete in most sports is fleeting and small,” said Brownlee, who led a creator keynote on the final day. from VidCon. The Hollywood Reporter. “You get, like, five years off your peak. If you’re lucky you play for eight, nine, 10 [years]. If you’re literally LeBron James, you’ve been playing for 20 years. It’s a short career in most areas.

And as creators seek to capitalize on their popularity as quickly as possible by churning out more content and following the whims of platforms, creator burnout can cause a career to decline even faster — or at least a which exists mainly online. After more than a decade of uploading videos to YouTube, Ingrid Nilsen – a longtime beauty and lifestyle YouTuber who appeared at recent VidCons – uploaded it final video in 2020, expressing a desire to retire as a professional content creator and explore new, offline pursuits. Now, Nilsen runs The New Savant candle company with his partner, Erica Anderson.

Meanwhile, Emma Chamberland, who rose to fame on YouTube and now has 11.5 million subscribers, has started posting less frequently on YouTube, where she recently returned from a six-month hiatus, to stem burnout. The designer, who runs a coffee business and has a successful podcast, is now building her career outside of YouTube through guest appearances hosting red carpet interviews at the Met Gala and on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.

For those trying to make a living from content creation, the pressure to keep up with trends and maintain relevance is always there. The rise of new platforms like TikTok also signals changes for the future of creator success, meaning creators who have focused on long-form videos on YouTube, for example, must be prepared to incorporate short forms in their strategies to maintain their relevance. YouTube’s main activations at VidCon, a “drive-thru” experience that handed out designer brand snacks and a 40ft tall chewing gum machine created by Jimmy Donaldson, aka MrBeast, all sported the YouTube Shorts branding, offering another clear signal of the importance the company places on short-form video instead of the long-form content its former stars were best known for.

Being platform-agnostic is especially key to diversifying subscribers and revenue, with creators like Katie Feeney and Alyssa McKay narrative THR which they post on YouTube, YouTube Shorts, Instagram, Reels, TikTok, and Snapchat. But being flexible with the type of content they post is just as important.

“You have to be constantly ready to evolve as a creator,” says McKay. “I started doing [point-of-view videos] and then I started rapping and then I started noticing, OK, my audience doesn’t resonate with that anymore. So now it’s all about lifestyle, but I’m sure in six months I’ll probably move on. You can’t try to force something that doesn’t work anymore…. It’s hard because it could lead to burnout, constantly trying to think of the next thing, but it’s one of the most important parts of the job.

Brittany Tomlinson, a TikTok creator and podcaster who goes by the name Brittany Broski, also noted during a roundtable with fellow creator Kris Collins (aka Kallmekris) that a content creator’s job can be very time-consuming. “I’ve done burnout many times – and it sounds so navel-like, like, ‘Oh, poor me.’ But when you think about it, it’s not a nine-to-five,” Tomlinson said. “It’s an ‘all the time’.”

Hank Green, the co-founder of VidCon, also highlighted the “struggle” creators face when keeping up with changes in the industry. “I feel like YouTube disrupted TV, TikTok disrupted all these big incumbents, and it’s so weird to have VidCon for those two events now, to some degree,” Green said in his opening speech. “Things have changed a lot and, for better or for worse, there are a lot of struggles that come with a disruption of this magnitude. But it also means that there are a lot of opportunities. There is plenty of time to figure it out.

But in this era, creators like Tomlinson say they aren’t afraid to leave if the time is right.

“The problem, which underpins everything we do, is the minute it stops being fun — and I’ve reached that point a few times — don’t expect anything from me,” Tomlinson said.