How Corporations Ruin Creators

If Corporations aren't careful, they'll strip the greatness out of Creators. If you're in marketing or work with creators, there's great lessons to be had from the Creator Classic. Let’s examine 3 principles you should know…

Creators in Sports, Context is Key & Content is King.

Creators in sports are here to stay. Just a few days after the Sidemen charity match, where Kai Cenat (a Nike endorser) kicked a goal in Adidas and got the third highest viewed content on their TikTok page, the PGA Tour runs back their second version of the Creator Classic.

This time the Creator Class was held in an even more famous venue, TPC Sawgrass ahead of their big signature event. I absolutely love the innovation that is coming to our game of golf. This time, they got an incredible lineup of stars-mostly YouTube golfers, and it was presented officially by YouTube as a presenting sponsor (that’s a big deal). This lineup included the crown prince of all YouTube Golf, Grant Horvat, and in the best case scenario, he won.

He deserves all of the marketing money he gets-and he gets a lot. He is the top YouTube golfer. He is charming, has a great smile, has an incredible swing. It's all well deserved.
But as an absolute sicko golfer 🙋‍♂️, I will watch almost any golf: college golf, pro golf, Asian amateur tours, I’m down… Unfortunately, I found this event to be almost unwatchable for the first two hours of a THREE AND A HALF hour broadcast. And this has absolutely nothing to do with these creators, and that's the problem.

Context is Key, Content is King:

A big source of the issue is context switching. So let's think about the context in which we see creators and why we know and love them, contrasting that with the context for the PGA Tour and how we normally see players on TPC Sawgrass.
It's a mistake to look on the surface and think that we love golf creators because they play golf.

Golf is an afterthought to the fact that these content creators are charismatic and engaging. They have incredible personalities and banter. There's a lot of conversation that happens amongst them and their friends, and all of them exist in a world that is highly edited and not LIVE.
On the other hand, we have PGA tour players who are sometimes criticized because they are not engaging enough. They don’t bring their personalities out. They are too vanilla.

But they have a saving grace. Their game does the talking for them. When we are watching PGA Tour tournaments, the context in which we watch is incredible golf on beautiful courses like TPC Sawgrass, with major production crews who are jumping from shot to shot constantly. And when you have a field of 50 to 100 players, you are only showing good shots.

So, when you take these Creators and put them in that PGA Tour context, it gets really tough. And when you strip them of what makes them great, most of all, you removed a microphone from all of these people. You removed editing techniques. All they have left is their golf game, which is better than most, but pretty bad compare to Tour Pros (duh); plus, they are playing from the PRO TEES in tournament conditions.

They are not pros! Now, once we finally got to the 17th hole, we had the incredible Fat Perez birdie that didn't really count for anything, but it was content.
* cue Bo Burnham “LOOK, I MADE YOU SOME CONTENTTTT”
Here's my proposal: I say you go into the creator's world and make a 30 to 60 minute YouTube cut down that's prerecorded and NOT live if you're not going to give them the resources that a normal tour broadcast has. Add a pairs or team element to increase the banter that we love.

I saw an incredible example of knowing your audience when I visited Overtime Elite in Atlanta. At that time, they didn't actually LIVE broadcast full games. Update: with the recent rise of Streaming, they are now doing this, but they’re evolving to their audience!
Back then, they only did YouTube cutdowns because their audience is generally Gen Z. And they're not sitting around to watch three and a half hour games or broadcasts. They mostly want the highlights and they want the best parts.

That's what we know and love our creators for, and that's ultimately what they will deliver us. And we could have gotten this without three and a half hours of a broadcast. So the next time you're thinking about partnering with creators, think about what actually makes them great and why their audience follows them.

And don't just think because you're the bigger entity, pulling them into your format and space will deliver the same results that they get in their format and space.

Education:
The BrandFathers new episode is out NOW: This week we break down everything you need to know about AGENCIES: the secret force behind your favorite brands.

Or, you can always visit HowToGetAJobAtNike.com for some of my career resources & advice as well.

Blessings:

Don’t forget to share the wisdom that you helped you get where you are. My content is an example of that, but you have a way of sharing too.