Knowledge Creators 🤝 Cool Stuff

The latest content + happenings from the creators we rep here at Smooth

• Smooth x Lightricks is back | On Monday, our Smooth team helped showcase just how impactful the AI tools from Lightricks’ LTX Studio can be in developing creative ideas. We heard from leaders in film, creativity, and advertising about the unique ways LTX Studio powers their process.

  And on Tuesday night, Lightricks gathered creators for an NYC meetup featuring LTX Studio demos and keynotes and panels led by Smooth creators: video creator & director Megan Tan and tech creator Tim Simmons. ⭐

• The Coding Sloth 📈 | The Coding Sloth passed 300K subscribers on YouTube, just over a year after launching his channel on software, coding, and tech.

• TheGalacticGal to the moon? | Camille Bergin, aka TheGalacticGal, has been crushing it—she took her audience to Arizona to see a 50,000-year-old meteor crater and showcased how bad ass women in STEM are at the Space Gala. All that hot on the heels of her speaking gig in Mexico City, talking space with 1,500+ students, teachers, and families.

Brand Campaigns Hot Off the Press 🗞️

Some of the fun partnerships our team’s been working on with creators + brands

Jacklyn Dallas x Microsoft | Jacklyn took NothingButTech international with a trip to Rome 🇮🇹 to see how Microsoft’s AI for Good team created a digital replica of the Vatican’s Basilica in an effort to show it to the world and preserve it for generations to come.

Jabrils x Hostinger | Jabrils always brings the energy to his coding and tech videos, and this one is no exception—the video and the ad within it are funny, perfectly paced, and genuinely interesting. 

Bukola x Coursera | Bukola makes the most delightful videos about working in tech, and she’s been sharing a ton of insight on her job hunt in a tough tech market. Her recent partnership with Coursera was so natural and genuinely valuable for her audience—a win win.

Thoughts for the Road 🛣️

A little something we’ve been chatting about here at Smooth HQ

When we consider gestures to everything the state of the world right now, it’s no surprise we’re confronted with words like “Joe Rogan” and “red wave” and “do you think Kamala Harris going on Call Her Daddy made any difference” regularly.

Nearly three weeks post-election, it’s become increasingly evident that this go-round deviated tremendously from the norm (in fairness, what doesn’t these days?). And as we piece together the jigsaw that led us here, one particular thesis has emerged:

This was the creator election.

Donald Trump appeared with the likes of Logan Paul and Theo Von and Andrew Schultz, playing the hits to his voter base of white men on welcoming turf. Kamala Harris similarly made the rounds with her own tour of familiar audiences, from Alex Cooper’s Call Her Daddy to an extended tie-in with America’s favorite nepo baby turned TikToker, Jack Schlossberg.

But it wasn’t just the candidates themselves who made this the creator election. We were all in on this shift—because social platforms are now our lifelines to deep cut memes and political news alike. In fact, per Edelman…

• As of 2024, 52% of TikTok users get their news on the platform, up from 22% in 2020.

• And 40% of Instagram users get their news there, versus 28% in 2020.

We increasingly turn to creators we find on the FYP for news, insights, and perspectives we can use to shape our own, a reality that became more and more obvious as the votes rolled in on November 5. So, it begs a question for your favorite local knowledge creator agency: What does scaling a creator business look like for political creators, if the pendulum is swinging so unmistakably toward them?

Here’s our working thesis: For many political creators, direct revenue (premium content, platform payouts, etc.) makes more sense than advertising-based revenue to best capture the momentum post-election. Advertisers are apprehensive of appearing next to political content, even if it’s billed as nonpartisan, in a political theater as polarized and contentious as ours.

At least, that’s what we’ve been talking about this week. What do you think?