Creators risk “breaking their whole career” by chasing trends or treating platforms as silos, exec warns

Creators who chase hot trends or treat a single platform as their entire strategy risk hampering their long-term earning potential, senior executives from Spotify, Snap and We Are Era have warned.

Tobias Schiwek, chief executive of studio and talent agency We Are Era, said creators should instead measure success by whether their work can last and travel beyond a single app.

“Sustainability is a good degree for that. Would it travel across platforms?” he said, speaking at the MIP conference* in London. “Once I have solved the narrative, then I have to adapt to the platform. I cannot re-upload the same piece to every platform.”

Schiwek was responding to a question about what separates long-lasting intellectual property from content that simply performs in the moment. He argued that creators must first define the core narrative or value they offer, and then reshape it for different environments rather than relying on one algorithm.

He added that the greater risk lies in damaging the relationship with the community itself.

“It breaks the whole career of a creator if they get detached from the community, or if they promise something for a couple of years and then behave differently,” he said. “There’s absolutely no way to recover from that. It’s hard, at least.”

Intimacy over scale

Speaking on the same panel, Saruul Krause-Jentsch, head of podcasts for Central and Western Europe at Spotify, said the most long-lasting IP is built on intimacy rather than scale – and cannot be artificially manufactured.

“What people expect from a podcast is like an intimate experience… most people listen on earphones… it’s this very intimate experience that you share with your host,” she said.

That closeness can become the foundation of a broader brand business. Krause-Jentsch pointed to Stephen Bartlett’s Diary of a CEO as an example of a podcast used as a launch pad for wider brand expansion.

“He literally understood his podcast as a starting point of a bigger brand. And Diary of a CEO is now a product. He has card games, he has courses, live experiences,” she said.

She noted that even Spotify found such connection difficult to manufacture.

“We tried it so many times back in the day when we did originals. We had people together, we did a lot of castings where we thought, okay, we’re gonna find the next podcast star.”

Instead, she said, hits tend to emerge from humbler beginnings.

“It’s such a scrappy little thing… everyone can just buy [a mic] for 50 euros… and I think this is what still actually really drives the next generation of podcasts – it’s just people trying. They’re trying, testing, learning.”

Julie Bogaert, head of creator partnerships for EMEA at Snap, echoed that pattern.

“We once had originals as well… and it’s always the same outcome. People prefer seeing their favourite creators doing what they do authentically,” she said.

She added that trust can erode when creators pivot into trending categories without putting in the work. Bogaert described seeing lifestyle creators attempt to reposition themselves as UFC fighters after watching others succeed in the space.

“If they can see that you’re just doing it because you feel like it’s the right thing to do, that’s where you can break the trust,” she said. “And it’s very difficult to rebuild.”

*Talent as the Shortcut: How Community-led IP Scale across Platforms, MIP London, 23 February 2026, London.