I cover creators at Like & Subscribe, an Ankler Media newsletter that’s being sampled today for subscribers to The Ankler. I profiled YouTube daredevil Michelle Khare amid her Emmy push, wrote about Hollywood’s creator gold rush and covered Netflix’s podcast ambitions. I’m natalie@theankler.com
Did you catch the news? I’m packing my bags and heading to France as Ankler Media storms the Croisette in our return to the 73rd Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.
It will be a très busy few days as Ankler editor-in-chief Janice Min and I host a series of conversations with heavy hitters including YouTube chief business officer Mary Ellen Coe, Fox Entertainment CEO Rob Wade, Netflix president of advertising Amy Reinhard, Roku Media president Charlie Collier, Bravo chairman Frances Berwick, comedy creator Brittany Broski, Summer House and In The City star Lindsay Hubbard and more. Plus, The Ankler will host an exclusive, invite-only Creators & Culture lunch presented by Whalar at Villa Bagatelle. I’ll be recapping it all for you with three special editions of Like & Subscribe next week.
As I predicted in May, plans for Lions came together in a frenzy as the fest cements itself as the gathering place for creators, marketers and entertainment executives — even if ongoing geopolitical conflicts have boosted the cost of the already pricey event. The growing importance of Lions corresponds with the advertising industry’s warm embrace of creators, as evidenced by Accenture Song’s early June acquisition of creator and social agency Whalar. (WPP and Publicis have both also made big bets on influencer marketing in recent years, scooping up The Goat Agency and Influential, respectively.)
And there’s another new deal that highlights the growing coziness of big brands and creators. State Farm, one of the biggest advertisers on NFL and NBA games, has signed on to be the official insurance partner of Dude Perfect and the presenting partner of their YouTube variety show, Overtime. The deal brings the sports sponsorship playbook to a YouTube-first brand and will also see State Farm support Dude Perfect’s soccer-themed Impossible Wall activation in cities around the country this summer.
All the ad money flowing to creators — and anyone following the creator playbook, including athletes, musicians and entertainment brands — has transformed Cannes Lions in recent years from a small gathering of creative marketing executives into a see-and-be-seen confab of bold names. This year alone, the Croisette will play host to Oprah Winfrey, Alan Cumming, Alex Rodriguez, Seth Meyers and Mel Robbins. The downside to all the buzz? “The Croisette has become a loud, gated world where access is purchased at extraordinary cost, and the distance between emerging talent and the people capable of changing their futures has never felt greater,” Brian Collins, co-founder of design agency Collins, recently wrote on LinkedIn. (Collins is behind the uber-exclusive Collins House, hosted at a private villa in the hills above Cannes, where I’ll be moderating a conversation about how reality TV has become a creator career starter.)
Today — as you put the finishing touches on your Cannes schedule and finally decide which outfits you’re least likely to sweat through — I’m helping you tune out the noise. Below you’ll find a no-BS list of people you should actually take the time to meet in Cannes. They’re the ones holding the purse strings, brokering the relationships and actually building the bridges between creators, brands and Hollywood.
Keep reading for the full list, including an investor with $250 million to pour into creator businesses, top brand-creator matchmakers — and the in-demand, under-the-radar brothers atop YouTube agency Loud Studios.
Tucker Brown
Managing partner, Compound Creative Holdings
Brown is making the trek to France with $250 million stockpiled and a plan to buy up creator-first businesses in his week-old role as managing partner of Compound Creative Holdings, the new holding company from CAA and TPG-backed Integrated Media Co. His thesis: With a little cash and operational support, creators can build big enterprises with staying power.
In his 14 years as a partner at CAA Evolution, Brown helped Dude Perfect raise more than $100 million from Highmount Capital to supercharge the group’s growth into a multi-platform sports media business. He also advised MeidasTouch Network on its investment from Soros Fund Management.
James Brownstein
Founder, Poster Child
When brands need to build a creator marketing campaign, they turn to Twitter alum Brownstein, who — after seven years leading creator and entertainment partnerships at the social media platform — opened up his own influencer marketing agency in 2023. “There was a big gap in the influencer marketing agency space where no one had taste, no one knew how to work with talent and no one was creating content that felt internet native,” says USC alum Brownstein, who now oversees a team of 20. “My whole thesis with Poster Child was, if we could move with better taste and information flow, we can change the way that influencer marketing agencies operate.”
Brownstein is heading to his second Cannes to support client Microsoft, having helped the company develop long-term relationships with Alix Earle, Mel Robbins and Olandria Carthen to promote its suite of products including Copilot and Windows. Earlier this year, he connected the red-hot Heated Rivalry star Connor Storrie with Verizon for a tongue-in-cheek ad directed by Nia DaCosta. Other clients include wedding platform The Knot and Shriners Children’s healthcare network.
Jesse & Justin Dueck
Co-Founders, Loud
The very under-the-radar Dueck brothers have quietly become the go-to guys for brands looking to build a meaningful audience on YouTube, the platform they believe holds the keys to the biggest opportunity in media today. Their firm, Loud, is the YouTube agency of record for General Motors and its portfolio of brands. For Cadillac, for example, they produced What Makes Fast: Cadillac’s Road to F1, a YouTube series about the car company’s road to building the first American F1 racecar.
Jesse is a former executive producer for creators including Jake Paul, Brent Rivera and Adam W. Former UC Davis basketball player Justin has a background in marketing. Together, they helped build some of the biggest YouTube channels and creator businesses before deciding to share their secrets with Madison Avenue.
David Freeman
CEO, Kynetic Media Ventures
“We want to build around fandoms,” says Freeman, who after 15 years leading the digital media department at CAA is heading to Cannes with a new goal this year, talking to brands about how his six-month-old firm can help them own their audience on YouTube. “I’m excited to talk to CMOs about a different way of reaching audiences and building content, experiences and storytelling.”
With Kynetic, Freeman is investing in and financing digital-first content as well as advising brands, sports organizations and universities on their YouTube presence. Freeman, who is still operating partially in stealth mode as he builds up his roster, tells me he’s working with top-tier creators as well as a number of professional athletes and other bold names with big fandoms. And he recently announced a partnership with entertainment marketing and content production company Dolphin to form Graviteur Studios, an independent film and TV studio that will back digital-first projects — including YA thriller Crush Party from writer Johnny Saras — in the $1 million to $10 million range.
Jae Goodman & John Kaplan
Co-founders, Superconnector Studios
The winding journey to the du Cap is worth it for a meeting with Goodman and Kaplan, who via their three-year-old Superconnector Studios have made themselves indispensable to brands like Starbucks, Chime and Revlon looking to find their way into the next summer blockbuster or Emmy winner. The CAA Marketing veterans — Goodman, who has won five Cannes Lions Grand Prix awards, was co-head and chief creative officer and became CEO when the entertainment marketing business sold to Stagwell Media — were behind 2025’s expansive multi-year partnership between AB InBev and Netflix to integrate beverage brands like Bud Light and Stella Artois into the streamer’s shows.
Goodman and Kaplan also worked with LVMH to launch 22 Montaigne Entertainment, partnering Dior with Imagine Entertainment on Ron Howard documentary Avedon, which premiered at the other Cannes in May. 22 Montaigne also has a Kenya Barris show in the works about the Hennessy family estate in Cognac, France.
Monica Khan
Founder and CEO, Creator Revolution; Senior advisor, McKinsey & Co.
Khan is an expert at helping creators like Marina Mogilko build businesses with long-term value. Through her firm Creator Revolution, the San Francisco-based alum of Spotter, Facebook and YouTube has brought in multiple millions in brand partnerships for her clients.
Six months ago, Khan joined McKinsey as a senior advisor on the creator economy, consulting with organizations on how to build a creator strategy. It’s an expansion of work the UC Berkeley MBA was already doing advising brands, agencies and platforms on how to partner with creators to grow awareness, build trust and acquire new customers.
Ndidi Oteh, Jo Cronk & Emma Harmon
CEO, Accenture Song; co-CEOs, Whalar
When legendary ad exec David Droga stepped down as CEO of Accenture Song last fall, he hand picked Oteh as his successor. A 14-year veteran of consulting giant Accenture, Oteh has moved its tech-powered marketing services arm closer to the heart of the creator economy. In August 2025, when she was overseeing Accenture Song’s Americas business, the $20 billion company acquired social and influencer agency Superdigital. And just a few weeks ago, St. Louis-born Oteh led the acquisition of Whalar. With these moves, Accenture Song is focusing not just on scale or automation — though it has embraced AI — but rather on deepening its relationship with creators.
It’s little surprise that when Oteh went looking for the right shop to bring creator know-how in house, she landed on Whalar, the creator agency arm of Neil Waller’s Whalar Group. Led by Brooklyn-based Cronk and London-based Harman, Whalar has built its reputation through its work with such brands as Coca-Cola, Guinness, the NFL, Target and Waymo. When IKEA asked Whalar to help it gain new relevance with Gen Z, for instance, the agency launched a TikTok campaign featuring creators renovating their homes to the soundtrack of an original Swedish pop track — it reached more than 50 million people. Says Harman, “It genuinely feels like we’re entering a new creative renaissance, with creators helping to shape culture in real time.”
Billy Parks
Head of Fox Creator Studios, Fox Entertainment
Parks is on a mission to invest in the next valuable entertainment IP, and he believes it’ll come from a creator. The digital video veteran joined Fox in March to spearhead its new Creator Studios division, where he’s financially backing new content from a host of big personalities, from chef Gordon Ramsay to YouTube baker Rosanna Pansino to comedian Tom Segura to TikTok phenom Josh Richards. “Great ideas can come from anywhere, and more than ever the opportunity is figuring out how to help those ideas travel across platforms, formats and audiences,” says the Colorado College alum.
A former music video producer and digital media veteran, Parks has spent much of his career helping to identify and invest in shining stars of the creator economy. The alum of Fullscreen and Otter Media spent five years investing in creator-first businesses at The Chernin Group. It’s work he continued at VC firm Slow Ventures, where he deployed capital to podcaster Steven Bartlett and woodworker Jonathan Katz-Moses. Parks will be speaking alongside Fox Entertainment’s Rob Wade in a panel moderated by Janice on Tuesday at the Impact Lounge at La Muse Restaurant — get more details and RSVP here.
Dan Robbins
Head of brand sponsorships, Substack
Substack is throwing open its doors to advertisers and has tapped ad world veteran Robbins to be their guide. “I’ll be finding ways for marketers to support what’s already happening on Substack,” says the Cornell University alum, whose hiring coincided with the news that the newsletter platform has introduced a native sponsorships program with such partners as Uber, Balenciaga and T-Mobile.
The former general manager of Roku Brand Studio, who most recently led growth and strategy at PayPal Ads, is heading to Cannes just days into his new role. He tells me he’ll be focused on educating brands on how to earn an audience’s attention through partnerships with the writers on Substack, where previously anyone with a following had to broker those relationships all on their own. Which brings me to…
Max Stein
Founder and CEO, Brigade Talent
Technically Stein is a manager, but he really operates more like a partner to his roster of writers, tastemakers and professionally cool clients, among them newsletter mavens Emily Sundberg, Casey Lewis and Becky Malinsky, Man Repeller founder Leandra Medine and How Long Gone hosts Chris Black and Jason Stewart. Together with Malinsky, a fashion writer who started on Substack in 2022 after leaving The Wall Street Journal, he started selling sponsorships on Substack years before the platform got into the game itself.
Through Brigade, his six-person firm, Los Angeles-based Stein says he’s focused on “building the career of our clients.” And the careers of his clients have taken off as audiences clamor for direct, voicey email dispatches from their favorite creative professionals. “Obviously on social platforms, people have these enormous numbers, but engagement is not the same,” says the Florida native, who is making a splash at his first Cannes. Sundberg is partnering with Yahoo and Adobe on events at the fest, Lewis is working with Day One Agency — and other brands that want to tap into the audience these writers have built will have to meet with Stein first.
The U.K. will ban social media apps for users under the age of 16 following similar legislation in Australia, Canada, Brazil and Indonesia.
Netflix has expanded its licensing agreement with iHeartMedia, adding podcasts from Martha Stewart, Kate Hudson and Lele Pons.
On Friday, MrBeast became the first creator to hit 500 million subscribers on YouTube.
