VidCon, the marquee tent gathering for creators and influencers, was ready for a triumphant return to Anaheim after its two-year COVID-19 break. And this year, TikTok – the once-emerging platform that soared to more than 1 billion plus active users during the pandemic – took YouTube’s place as the conference’s title sponsor, bringing the presence of top TikTok creators and an injection of new energy in the 12-year conference.
The creative economy has skyrocketed in recent years, with the market size for consumers spending money on creators projected to range from $ 9.8 billion to more than $ 18 billion, according to an October 2021 UTA report. And along with that growth came substantial budgets from brands that demonstrate lucrative deals with talent and continued interest from budding creators who seek to earn their following and turn their content into a business. According to Insider Intelligence, spending on influencer marketing in the US is expected to exceed $ 4 billion this year, with major brands such as Levi’s and Louis Vuitton working with top talent such as Emma Chamberlain, while the NFL and energy drink Celsius are emerging stars such as Katie Feeney for partnerships. .
But as much as the creator-driven industry has grown, this year’s VidCon has given an unshakable reminder of how a creator’s career – and, by extension, their relevance and strength – can fade as fast as it explodes.
To illustrate so much, VidCon kicked off on June 22 with the dethronement of TikTok’s reigning queen, Charli D’Amelio. That evening, as well-known creators gathered at the Hyatt Hotel near the Anaheim Convention Center to look at the aesthetically pleasing lounges of platforms such as TikTok, YouTube and Meta, Khaby Lame – the Senegalese and Italian comedian best known for his death , wordless videos and wide Reactions with eyes – became the most followed creator on TikTok, pushing D’Amelio away from the place she had held for about two years. (As of publication, Lame has 144.5 million followers to D’Amelio’s 142.9 million).
The next day, D’Amelio appeared on stage for a sponsored talk with creator Brandon Baum for Lightricks. But instead of being a marquee tent event in the convention center’s main ballroom, especially given TikTok’s role as VidCon’s title sponsor, the conversation took place on a stage – sponsored by Spotify – hidden at the back of the expo. hall, which competes with the chatter coming from the dozens of branded booths erected in the same hall.
This is not to say that fans did not line up for a meeting and greeting with D’Amelio or that the creator’s businesses – which now include a fragrance, clothing line, reality show on Hulu and major brand partnerships with companies like Dunkin ‘ , among other things – in any way reduced. But the zeal surrounding top talent from VidCons’ past, where over-penetrating screams from fans were the norm, felt particularly subdued for a creator with a following as big as D’Amelio’s. And when asked about her advice to other creators during her appearance on stage, there was a feeling that D’Amelio might be getting tired of everything.
“Do not commit yourself to anything specific,” said D’Amelio, who initially went viral on TikTok with videos of her dancing. “It is not worth always being forced to do one thing. I feel if you do, you can do it just as long until you get bored of it and you want to switch. And if you’re so used to making just one kind of content, you can kind of feel trapped. ”
As for the loss of her top position to Lame – led by Milan-based Iron Corp. entitled and recently signed a multi-year deal with Hugo Boss – D’Amelio assured fans that there was “no bad blood”. “For two years I had no. Had 1. I feel it’s time for someone else to get that place, ”said D’Amelio. “It feels great to know that someone else is getting that place – someone who is sweet and a good person and loves what they do.… I would not want to hand it over to anyone else.”
D’Amelio’s presence at VidCon also highlighted the absence of other creators who have been the main attractions at VidCons in recent years, including YouTube creators such as David Dobrik and his Vlog Squad, Jake and Logan Paul, Tyler Oakley, Jenna Marbles, Grace Helbig, Philip DeFranco and Casey Neistat. The conference also brought in a noticeably smaller crowd this year with 50,000 personal attendees compared to the 75,000 attendees at the 2019 conference, although COVID likely influenced the decline in attendance.
Marques Brownlee, a technology reviewer who has more than 15 million subscribers on YouTube, describes the careers of creators as similar to those of professional athletes. “Many people want to be a professional athlete. But if you look at it, the life cycle of a professional athlete in most sports is floating and small, ”says Brownlee, who led a creator main note on the last day of VidCon. The Hollywood Reporter. “You get, like, five years of your heyday. If you’m lucky you play for eight, nine, 10 [years]. If you’re literally LeBron James, you’ve been playing for 20 years. It is a short career in most fields. ”
And as creators strive to capitalize on their popularity as quickly as possible by extracting more content and following the whims of platforms, creator burnout can lead to an even faster decline in a career – or at least one that mainly exist online. After more than a decade of uploading videos to YouTube, Ingrid Nilsen – a longtime beauty and lifestyle YouTube fan who appeared at previous VidCons – uploaded her final video in 2020, expressing the desire to become a professional retire content creator and explore new pursuits, offline. Now Nilsen runs the Christmas company The New Savant with her partner, Erica Anderson.
Meanwhile, Emma Chamberlain, who gained notoriety on YouTube and now has 11.5 million subscribers, started posting less frequently on YouTube to stop burnout, where she recently returned from a six-month hiatus. The creator, who runs a coffee company and has a successful podcast, is now in the midst of growing her career off YouTube through appearances featuring red carpet interviews at the Met Gala and on The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon.
For those trying to make a living by creating content, the pressure to keep up with trends and maintain relevance is still present. The rise of new platforms like TikTok also points to changes for the future of creative success, which means that creators who have focused on long-form videos on YouTube, for example, should be ready to include short forms in their strategies to retain their relevance. YouTube’s top activations at VidCon, a “drive-thru” experience that handed out creators’ brand snacks and a 40-foot-tall kagombal machine created by Jimmy Donaldson, or MrBeast, were all adorned with the YouTube Shorts brand, which is another clear sign of how much emphasis the company places on short form video instead of the long form content for which its previous stars were best known.
Being platform agnostic is especially key to diversifying followers and revenue, with creators like Katie Feeney and Alyssa McKay telling it THR that they post on YouTube, YouTube Shorts, Instagram, Reels, TikTok and Snapchat. But being flexible with the type of content they post is just as important.
“You just have to be constantly ready to evolve as a creator,” McKay says. “I started doing [point-of-view videos] and then I started raping and then I started noticing, okay, my audience no longer resonates with this. So now it’s all about lifestyle, but I’m sure within six months I’ll probably be left with something else. You can not try to enforce something that just does not work anymore. … It is difficult, because it can lead to burnout, to constantly try to think of the next thing, but it is one of the biggest parts of the job. ”
Brittany Tomlinson, a TikTok creator and podcaster led by Brittany Broski, also noted during a panel discussion with co-creator Kris Collins (also known as Kallmekris) that the work of a content creator can be all-consuming. “I’ve been burnt out a few times already – and it sounds like navel-gazing, like, ‘Oh, poor me.’ But if you think about it, it’s not a nine to five, “Tomlinson said.” It’s an ‘always’. “
Hank Green, the co-founder of VidCon, also took note of the “struggle” that creators face when keeping track of changes in the industry. “I feel like the way YouTube has disrupted television, TikTok has disrupted all these big incumbents, and it’s so weird to have VidCon now for both of those occasions to some extent,” Green said in his opening speech. “Things have changed a lot and, for better or worse, there is a lot of struggle associated with a disruption of that magnitude. But it also means that there are many opportunities. There is a lot of time to find out. ”
But at that time, creators like Tomlinson say they are not afraid to leave when the time is right.
“The kick of the issue, which is underlying everything we do, is the moment it stops being fun – and I’ve reached that point a few times – should not expect anything from me,” Tomlinson said.