In a Q1 defined by cultural moments, brands are looking for creators they can build with

The first quarter of 2026 has been noticeably busy for the creator economy, shaped by a cultural calendar that pushed even the most hesitant brands to act.

The Winter Olympics and a near-continuous awards season concentrated brand attention and budgets early. Netflix deepened its push into creator-led formats, the NBA mobilised more than 200 creators around All-Star Weekend, and several household names – among them Bath and Body Works – set out plans to significantly increase creator spend.

For Jack Reed, founder and chief executive of Millennial Entertainment, a Los Angeles-based talent management firm, it reflects a change that has been building for years. 

"Three or four years ago, brands were hesitant – it was almost an afterthought," he told The Daily Influence. "Now social and digital is a priority. They want to find creators they can build bigger relationships with."

That shift is playing out alongside changes in how budgets are being allocated. 

Max Litke, director of talent partnerships at the firm, said the World Cup is already shaping how brands are thinking about the year ahead.

"A lot of strategy and funds are being directed toward the World Cup," he said.

Reed founded Millennial Entertainment in 2017, when he estimates there were around a hundred management companies in the space. Litke joined five years ago and runs the New York operation, focusing on securing and managing opportunities for talent across brands.

Both said the first quarter has been instructive, though not always in the ways the volume of activity suggests.

Beyond the algorithm

One of the more visible developments this quarter has been the uptick in creators building beyond the feed – launching everything from product lines to format deals and stakes in sports clubs.

Reed said IP is increasingly where serious creators are focusing, but that execution is where many fall short.

"You can have a product launch that lasts 90 days – that’s not a company," he said. "One stick of deodorant is not a company."

What he looks for is a three to five-year vision and a product that can evolve over time, rather than peak at launch.

Litke, meanwhile, acknowledged a quieter truth. 

"There are only so many seats at the table," he said. "Part of our job is being realistic and transparent in the feedback we get – not leaving talent thinking it's their turn when it isn't."

The creators doing it well, both said, are treating it less like a launch and more like a business. 

Litke pointed to TikToker Haley Kalil, who started doing red carpet appearances unpaid, built a presenting portfolio that way, and has since landed her first television hosting role – fronting Netflix's upcoming reality competition series Win the Mall. 

"It's about getting your reps in," he said. "Developing yourself as talent across entertainment."

Useful, not yet transformative

Similarly, while AI has dominated headlines this quarter, both Reed and Litke said the reality inside the business remains more measured than the noise suggests – evidenced by the fact that its biggest story of the period was a shutdown rather than a breakthrough.

OpenAI shuttered its video generation app Sora last week, citing compute costs and competition. It came just months after deepfakes of Jake Paul – who had signed on as an investor and advisor to the Sora team – flooded the internet, prompting widespread debate about what the technology would mean for creators.

Reed said the saga is proof that the technology moves faster than anyone can fully anticipate, but that creators who ignore it do so at their own risk.

"The cat is out of the bag," he said. "There are ways to use it to your advantage – but you have to educate yourself on it."

Transparency, he argued, is the only non-negotiable – creators who obscure their use of AI risk the one thing that makes them valuable to brands.

Litke, meanwhile, said the more immediate reality is less dramatic than the headlines suggest, with most creators using it as a planning tool rather than a creative replacement.

"People are using it to work out what to post, when to post, how to stay on trend," he said, though acknowledged that's "probably just the tip of the iceberg."

Quality trumps everything

Looking forward, the question of where the relationship between brands and creators is ultimately heading is perhaps the most consequential to emerge from the quarter.

As platforms compete for the same pool of established talent and brands grow more deliberate about who they back, the argument that brands will eventually move from commissioning creators to hiring them directly has gained ground.

Litke's view is that the shift, if it comes, is most sustainable when it is built on genuine collaboration rather than imitation.

"The ideal is a brand saying, we love what you've built, we want to be part of it," he said, warning that brands which try to replicate what creators have built on their own terms rarely get away with it.

"Fans immediately recognise when something's being ripped off," he said. "Brands have learned from those mistakes."

Reed's longer view is that the rising competition – for talent, for the right partnerships, for cultural relevance – is what ultimately forces standards up across the board. Brands that get it right, he said, are the ones arriving with genuine intent rather than a brief.

"There's no playbook," he said. "But if you're creative, entrepreneurial and driven, there's a real opportunity."

If the first quarter has shown anything, it's that brands are beginning to understand the difference.

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