The new direct to creator model

02 Jul 2025

When I first put my business plan together for DACRE. I had three points centred around value.

- Create value: proposition, positioning, capabilities, services

- Deliver value: operations, systems, processes, talent, delivery

- Capture value: commercial model to capture revenue

It’s probably the best way I’ve found to articulate the nuts and bolts of a business. I found this via Edward Cotton podcast with Caroline Johnson a while back.

Everyone focuses on delivering value, obsessed with AI solving all their needs with the hope of increasing productivity and ultimately profitability.

What we don’t talk about and which is more important is how we capture value.

Whether you're a publisher, agency or creator... the tide is changing here.

In a world where we’ve been bought up on the ad funded model. Where platforms now control over half of ad spend. Platforms controlling who and what is shown. Predominantly serving the big, for the big.

The co-founder of Substack wrote a great article 'Beyond Cannes' about this Hamish McKenzie.

“It concentrates power in the hands of a few platform rulers, puts the audience’s needs below the advertiser’s, and strips creators of ownership”

What is emerging is a creative economy capturing value through a ‘direct to creator’ model.

This is where platforms like Substack become interesting. Both the creator and the consumer are in control, not what an algorithm thinks.

Even better, in my mind, if this is stripped of any platform at all… you own the relationship and data directly. Going back to the power of first party data and why it’s so important.

“What will it look like when we’ve spent two decades exploring what direct payments can do for art and media?”

“When audiences directly support the creators they most love and trust, new kinds of media businesses can thrive, and new works that don’t fit comfortably with the ad model can flourish”

So in the context of creators, of anything, whether that is writing, design, advertising whatever… how we capture our value across the creative industries will shift the power and shift the work that sees the light of day.

Focusing too much on ‘delivering value’ through AI but using the old ad funded model or in agencies case hourly rate, is a race to the bottom, a world of diminishing returns. It’s commoditisation to its core.

Creating value, linked to a direct to creator funded model to capture it with a smart ‘human led, tech enabled’ delivery system… feels like the best way companies and creators across creative industries will really thrive over the next decade.