The Creator Economy Is Splitting in Two. Here's What You Need To Know.

Cannes was a signal. And if you build, buy, or measure influence, this should change how you think about all of it.

Was it hotter than Hades in Cannes? Yes.

Did that stop me from wearing Valentino, turning my gel nails into NFC chips, and sharing my love for Wispr Flow? It did not. (Best icebreaker I’ve ever deployed, and I’ve deployed many.)

(…If you want to see the Valentino, it’s on the gram.)

But here’s what I actually came home with, and it matters more than any single panel or party. If you create anything, lead anything, or buy influence for a living, this affects you directly.

Cannes was a signal

Ten years ago, when I attended Cannes, the phrase “creator economy” didn’t exist. I remember talking to brands and trying (…failing) to get them to understand how truly powerful this force was going to be, just like when I tried to explain social media to people when it first came out. I got lots of polite smiles and a couple of nods, but not much belief.

Fast forward to this year. Creators had their own beach, their own pass tier, their own programming track. I don’t think anybody is arguing the power of creators today.

However, the interesting part is what’s happening inside the category now that it’s big enough to fracture. Influence is fragmenting into completely different kinds of value. And I want to help you be the first one to understand it.

“Creator” is now too broad a word

Walk the Croisette and you see one word stretched over people doing fundamentally different things.

Some creators create attention. Some create desire. Some create trust. Some create community. Some create language. Some create frameworks. Some create buying behavior. Some create belief.

Those are not the same thing. And yet we keep using one word for all of it, which means we keep hiring, measuring, and evaluating them as if they were interchangeable. They are not.

“Creator” is becoming as broad a word as “business.” It tells you almost nothing unless you ask: what kind?

The split

Here’s how I’d name it after watching it play out in real time for a week.

Audience-led creators monetize attention, entertainment, relatability, taste, and community. Their influence is built on audience intimacy and repeat engagement. They start with “what will people watch?” Entertainment first.

Idea-led creators monetize judgment, frameworks, expertise, interpretation, and IP. Their influence is built on a body of work and earned discernment. They start with “what do I believe? What do I see that others are missing?” Content is the distribution layer for their judgment. I’ve started calling this side the reference economy, because that’s what these people actually are: reference points. Other people use them to decide what to trust, what to buy, what to believe, what matters.

And this goes well beyond B2B thought leaders. A vintage dealer in Paris whose taste shapes what collectors hunt for. A chef whose palate sets the menu for an entire city’s dining culture. A fashion archivist whose saved Instagram posts influence next season's design rooms. A doctor whose clinical judgment makes her the person other doctors call. These are all reference creators. They may not have millions of followers. They have something harder to get: the trust of people who make decisions.

Both economies matter. Both can move markets. But they should not be hired, measured, or evaluated the same way. And confusing them is getting expensive, for brands and for creators.

Audience-led creators monetize attention. Idea-led creators monetize judgment.

What this looked like on the ground

I’ll say this with full self-awareness: I’ve always been the nerdy girl who brings a book to a party. At Cannes, that translates to preferring smaller events, deeper conversations, catching up with friends I haven’t seen, strengthening relationships. Not how many selfies I can snatch with people better known than me. (Do you really need to see a selfie of me with Oprah?)

But that preference put the split on full display. I was there as Wispr Flow’s first official partner, and I watched the same scene repeat all week: a quick glance, a quick hello, and then someone would hover over their phone, clearly doing some research, and come back a completely different person. I was now, all of a sudden, fascinating to them. One woman grabbed my arm: “Can I be honest with you? I would LOVE Wispr as a client.” That’s the attention economy in its natural habitat: transactional, fast, and always scanning the room for the next deal.

Then there were the other rooms. Collins House, where Brian Collins and Leland Maschmeyer built a space away from the beach madness with its own programming, and the guest list was people with actual bodies of work. That’s where I met Rory Sutherland, who people have spent years telling me is my “idea twin.” (I’ll take it.) Nobody in that room was optimizing for views. They were trading judgment. Different economy, same festival.

Two moments crystallized the thesis. I met up with a client, a Fortune 10 company, and the conversation quickly turned to their creator program. They had creators. They had an influencer marketing budget. But the feedback they were getting was shallow. I explained: the creators they’d engaged were audience-led, not idea-led. They were brilliant at visibility, but the company was expecting strategic insight. I could see the moment it clicked for her. Then I sat down with a product leader at one of the big platforms, gave him honest, specific feedback on what they’re building, and he told my contact it was the best input he’d gotten from any creator they work with. I don’t share that to brag. I share it because it revealed the gap. Brands keep buying reach and expecting judgment. Visibility has never been the same skill as insight.

The mistake brands keep making is flattening creators into one category and then being surprised when the value doesn’t match.

AI makes this split urgent

This is where it stops being a Cannes observation and becomes a market signal.

AI will flood the market with competent content. That means competent content stops being enough. When anyone can generate infinite articles, infinite videos, infinite posts, the commodity is no longer the content. Mediocrity becomes free. What sits underneath it begins to matter.

The premium shifts to things AI cannot manufacture: taste, trust, lived expertise, original language, point of view, community, judgment, and proof.

Content is getting cheaper. Judgment is getting more valuable.

The two curves are crossing right now. The split is a repricing that’s already underway. Ten years ago I stood at Cannes when “creator” barely existed as a category. This year it was the category. The next move is the split, and the market hasn’t priced it yet. That’s what makes it a window of opportunity.

The better question

Everyone still asks “how many followers?” It’s the wrong question.

The right question: What kind of decision can this person influence?

Can they make someone laugh? Buy? Believe? Belong? Understand? Trust? Change strategy? Change budget? Change direction?

That is the more useful creator taxonomy. And it changes the game for both sides of the table.

For leaders: this changes how you build influence

If you lead anything, you now have to think like a media company. And I mean that seriously, beyond “post more content.” The leaders who will own the next decade of influence need a clear point of view, proprietary language, trust signals built over time, proof of judgment (not just credentials), a body of work (not just a bio), distribution that compounds, and community or network effects that make their ideas travel.

Every ambitious leader is now a creator whether they use the word or not. The only question worth asking is what kind of influence you are trying to build. And if it doesn’t exist inside your company, this is where I think we’ll see more brands partnering with idea-led creators to bring exactly that point of view. Not as spokespeople. As strategic collaborators.

For companies: this changes how you buy influence

Before hiring a creator, before signing a single contract, ask:

Are we buying reach, trust, taste, expertise, community, or judgment? Do we need distribution or interpretation? Are we trying to sell a product, shape a category, or change how people think? Are we measuring the creator by the right value? Are we giving them a campaign brief when we should be giving them a strategic seat?

The brands that got this right at Cannes (LinkedIn’s team was the hardest-working example I saw all week) treated creators like colleagues, not inventory.

If you hire someone whose entire craft is maximizing views, you will get views. You will not get product strategy, market insight, or an honest read on your roadmap. Both are legitimate. Just know which one you’re buying.

The bigger idea

Cannes made creators visible. But the next phase belongs to people and companies who understand that influence is not one thing anymore. The creator economy is becoming the professional economy, and the line between “creator” and “leader” and “strategist” is dissolving faster than the old categories can contain it.

In an AI-saturated market, the most valuable creators will be the ones who make meaning, not just content.

So ask yourself the one question: if my content disappeared tomorrow, what would be left?

If the answer is “an audience that liked my content,” you’re audience-led, and your job is to convert attention into something durable, starting now. If the answer is “a framework, a method, a point of view people pay for,” you’re idea-led, and your job is the opposite: distribution. Your judgment is underexposed, and AI just made your kind of scarcity the valuable kind.

The next creator premium is interpretive power. Reach you can buy. Judgment you cannot.

And one more, because I mean it: opportunities come from people. Every single thing I just described happened because I got on a plane. Next time you’re on the fence about showing up in person, go. Maybe I’ll see you there?

— Shama