Welcome to the Future of Creator Marketing

Over the last three years of building Smooth, we’ve been working with the marketers at leading brands to architect innovative brand campaigns with creators. It’s core to what we do—like celebrating Colin’s dentist appointments or getting play-by-plays after Ali’s pickleball matches, it’s part of the Smooth DNA.

You can imagine, then, that we have a lot of ink to spill when it comes to the future of creator marketing. We feel confident that we’re currently at an inflection point: Brands’ definition of a “successful” partnership has changed dramatically, and the inputs that lead to a winning campaign have shifted as well.

With that in mind, we’ve pulled together 5 trends we think are shaping the future of creator marketing. These insights are pulled from our team’s conversations with major brands, creators, and experts driving innovation in the ways marketing budgets are spent.

We hope you enjoy, learn something, spark a conversation, and hit reply to let us know your own thoughts. Let’s do it!

• Smooth creator Jacklyn Dallas was tapped to join the CES advisory board ahead of the 2025 show.

• This was a really great POV on AI <> creativity from Emmett Shine, one of the foremost experts on brand design and tech.

• LinkedIn continues to push the boundaries in its evolution to creator-focused—it’s now introducing sponsored newsletters for company pages.

• I have recently become enamored with golf YouTube (never played golf, don’t think I should). Thought this was an interesting write-up of the golf knowledge creator niche in The Athletic right here.