Brands Are Handing Creators Executive Titles: How the New Trend Works

Until recently, when a brand announced it had brought a creator on in an internal role, the move was often met with skepticism. That's changing fast: chief marketing officers, and even CEOs, are starting to take creators seriously, and as the budgets allocated to them grow, so does their real influence over how companies are run.

This spring, comedian and creator Jack Shane was named chief creative officer of German candy company Katjes to help the brand grow in the U.S. market. Similarly, sparkling drink brand Cool Sips named reality TV star and creator Whitney Leavitt its chief creative and brand officer. And Cherub, an investment platform that connects creators with startups, appointed entrepreneur Nadya Okamoto as chief creator officer to help source deals.

San Diego-based eyewear company Blenders gave Jordan "The Stallion" Howlett, a creator with more than 50 million followers, the title of chief content officer — a role typically reserved for senior leadership. Since then, he has meaningfully reshaped the company's approach to social media, according to Blenders CEO Jack Gray. In one instance, Howlett had a store employee with just 100 followers film a video showing how durable the brand's sunglasses are — the clip racked up nearly 200,000 views on Instagram.

Gray confirmed the deal is a multi-year partnership and the brand's largest to date, though he declined to disclose the exact figure. "There's obviously a revenue piece to it, but I think it touches everything we do," he said. At the same time, Howlett remains a partner rather than an employee of the brand — a distinction that gets at the nuance of the arrangement.

Lily Comba, founder and CEO of influencer agency Superbloom, cautions that some "chief-something officer" titles amount to little more than an ego boost for a high-profile manager or the creator themselves — sometimes a one-off publicity move tied to a product launch that fades away afterward. Real value, she says, only emerges when a brand genuinely takes creators seriously and builds its business strategy around them — and that kind of reputation spreads fast.