How brands can play and win in the creator economy

About the report

The creator economy is a content engine worth more than $100 billion dollars. It’s fueled by 207 million content creators and counting. Brands who want to reach their audience with relevant and impactful content must understand the tools, platforms, and trends they need to empower their brands and craft the content of tomorrow.

These findings and many more come from the Artlist Trend Report 2024, where we talked to a range of Artlist experts and industry leaders with a diverse media focus and surveyed over 7,000 content creators. You can find all the valuable insights and marketing trends in the full report and discover the highlights throughout this blog post.

Artlist’s mission is to empower people to create without limits. So many challenges arise for all creators with our rapidly-changing technological and cultural landscape, and these can be especially tricky for brands and businesses to navigate. 32% of our survey respondents create promotional videos, 30% short films, 25% other, and 24% commercials. Right now, and looking forward to 2024, brands are living through a video content creation revolution. However, attention spans are shrinking, and consumers are demanding more authentic and personally relevant content. It’s more important than ever for brands to be clear on who they are and the essence of what they want to convey about themselves.

“Today, a brand’s vision and the business strategy that it influences all need to be conveyed to consumers through a single voice that spans diverse forms of media and remains authentic, no matter what.” — Ira Belsky, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Artlist.

Power your brand’s creativity in 2024 by uncovering B2B marketing trends and top predictions for the coming year.

Trend 1: Less technical work, more content

In an era of rapid technological development, the good news is that content creation will become easier than ever. Global content creators and brands strongly prefer Artificial Intelligence tools to speed up their workflow and open creative possibilities.

Whether it’s brainstorming creative concepts, finding the perfect footage, or removing technical work, AI is quickly becoming an essential part of the creative process. These tools are rapidly improving and will become even easier to use. According to our survey, by the fall of 2023, 52% of video creators reported that they were already using AI in their creative process.

As these AI tools continue to be used, they’ll produce even better quality outputs than we could have dreamed of even a year ago. Those in the industry will know that video editing was once considered a highly technical, expensive, and time-consuming skill. While this may still be true for the immediate future, exciting advancements in tech will make everything faster, easier, and cheaper. For example, until now, cleaning background noise, auto-editing, or masking have all been jobs completed in separate software. Asaf Yaniv, Head of Visual Content at Artlist, explains, “The entire creative process can now go from end-to-end as a one-person project, in a fraction of the time we used to expect — from ideation, through post-production, to publishing and monetization.”

In 2024, we’ll see automated post-production completing all of these tasks in one place. Options for post-production technology will increase while the time and cost involved will drop dramatically.

If your brand is looking to take advantage of this trend — we have 3 main takeaways:

• Prioritize new tools — Audit the latest tools and find out what you can use to streamline your workflow today.
• Make more content — Increase your brand recognition and support your marketing goals by leveraging new tools to do more work with less.
• Get legal insights now — Think through how each tool you use deals with copyright issues in training their models.

Trend 2: Push the boundaries of your brand

Every brand is now in the content business. No longer are they just competing with their products or services, they’re fiercely trying to grab their audience’s attention. The brands that will succeed in 2024 will engage their audience with genuine creativity and the right visuals, sounds, videos, and motion design.

In 2024, it’s just as important for brands to take calculated risks as individual creators, but how far should you push those boundaries? Veda Partalo, Former VP, Global Head of Marketing at Spotify, and current Artlist board member, suggests that brands balance innovation and risk-taking, “how brands balance these opposing trends will depend on the creators they collaborate with and the world’s those collaborators open up.”

The Artlist 2024 Trend Report uncovered a sweet new trend for brands and creators in 2024 — eye-candy content. Minimalist design is out, and generative AI has driven a growing preference for bright, bold, and surrealist visuals. For example, this clip is fast climbing the ranks as one of Artlist’s top downloads. Brands that work out how this type of content fits with their marketing strategy will have a huge advantage in 2024.

Immersive experiences are also emerging as the next boundary-pushing frontier for brands in 2024. Get ready to see more new and exciting content using first-person view VR and drone footage. Putting this kind of first-person perspective in your marketing will give you the opportunity to connect with your customers and take your marketing to a whole new level.

Trend 3: Local talents, global reach

Influencer marketing

There’s a good opportunity for brands to learn from global creators in 2024 and focus their efforts on smaller niche audiences with higher engagement and ROI. Whereas, brands used to work with the biggest global celebrities and use the same content across most markets, now brands should shift their approach to a smaller, more local feel.

Partnering with creators with a smaller but fiercely loyal community will allow your brand to connect with diverse and niche audiences. These micro-influencers can support your brand authentically, connecting with its viewers and diversifying your customer base.

The survey revealed that 58% of creators distribute their content on YouTube, while 34% use Instagram, 12% use Facebook, and 10% use TikTok. Each of these platforms has its merits. The key is to meet your audience where they already are.

Look outside the English box

Video creators are heading towards more global-sounding soundtracks. 42% of creators have already used non-English music in their videos, and a further 31% are planning to in the near future. You can also partner with charismatic non-English speaking influencers to stand out and give your brand an authentically global feel.

Trend 4: Hire creative fire

In 2024, technical is out. Creativity is key. As technical editing and creation skills become less relevant due to AI and other new tech, creative talent will be the true differentiator. We’ve also noticed an uptick in brands taking their creative teams in-house rather than relying on outsourcing to agencies.

This is good news for brands and creators with technical skills, but there’s also a huge opportunity for creative, non-technical people to work with businesses and realize their vision. Brands should start looking to hire the most talented creators regardless of their technical background and expertise. Try working with your HR teams to evaluate candidates’ creative thinking and imaginative skills instead.

Multi-media thinking

In order to win in 2024, your brand takes a multi-media approach. Top creators conceptualize text, music, and visuals at the same time, and in 2024, the same will be true for the best brands.

Prepare your brand and get ahead of the trends by taking the following steps:

• Assess your hiring criteria — check your job requirements for content creation positions. Are they still relevant, or do you need to shift to a more creative mindset?
• Refocus your team on creativity — Map out how your team can be more creative and less technically focused.
• Check your balance — Understand if you’re too focused on one form of media or platform.

Trend 5: Personalization is paramount

Combat content overload

There’s so much content out there that even the most creative and compelling content is at risk of being lost in the content-verse. To help overcome this challenge, personalization is key. Ensure you’re tapping into the right channels for your audience and creating engaging content that allows for two-way communication.

Gen Z is at the forefront of this trend, strongly favoring tailored experiences. They prioritize individuality and prefer to engage with content that aligns with their interests rather than conforming to mainstream trends.

Activate your audience

Audiences are no longer passive consumers of content. It’s time to rethink the entire experience. Whether it’s being able to choose a journey in a video or app, play with filters, motion, or other interactive elements — consumers today expect to be an active part of their own experiences.

Authenticity is everything

Humans still crave authentic human experiences and creativity in this new technological landscape. Perfect polished outputs may be easy with AI, but they aren’t what audiences and creators like as they can’t relate to them. 48% of creators say they don’t want to take credit for AI-generated content.

For brands to succeed, they’ll need to balance tech with showcasing human stories. Share the full picture behind your polished brand. Perfect is good, but relatable and authentic is even better.

Wrapping up

In a world where companies have to differentiate and innovate to succeed, it’s never been more important for brands to be clear on who they are, what they want to convey about themselves, and how they will do it.

“2024 is set to be a truly unique year. The technological advances we’ve seen in 2023 have triggered an entirely new generation of enthusiastic creators exploring new directions. Technical expertise is no longer a barrier to entry. Creativity can be unleashed by anyone from anywhere. It’s going to be a wild ride of a year.” — Itzik Elbaz, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Artlist.

Brands are in the midst of a creative, technology, and content revolution — and it’s just getting started. To learn more about how you can get ahead and empower your brand’s creativity, speak to the Artlist team and read the full Artlist Trend Report 2024 

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