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Hey {{first_name|creator}},
It’s almost the end of 2025, and a lot of people are winding down.
Not creators, not marketers, not brands paying attention.
The last couple of months of the year are actually packed with signals. Experiments, shifts in audience behaviour, and campaigns testing what works next year.
If you’re watching, you can see the patterns early.
If you’re not, you’re missing the playbook for the new year.
Case in point, Alex Cooper just launched her own creative agency, Unwell Creative.
Let’s get into it 👇
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This issue will bring you up to speed on what’s happening in the creator economy:
Quick Fire news headlines
Worth The Read news stories
Social Media Updates that you need to know about
Check out my READ, LISTEN + WATCH recommendations for this week
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Quick Fire 🧨
X announces handles marketplace to sell dormant usernames
Meta lawyers advised blocking teen harm research to avoid suits
Worth The Read
Alex Cooper launches Unwell Creative
Alex Cooper proves creators can run the show
For years, brands held the final word on the creative brief. Alex Cooper’s latest move shows that it’s starting to change.
Alex Cooper, of Call Her Daddy fame, has launched Unwell Creative, her new agency under the Unwell Network.
The agency offers all the services you would expect, including content creation and marketing campaign development. Cooper's unique offering also gives brands access to Gen-Z-specific live events, original productions, and the Unwell network.
Cooper joins a growing number of creators turning their audience attention into full-blown media companies.
At a certain scale, leverage stops being about audience size and becomes more about infrastructure.
Her proven ability to build and monetise an audience, negotiate multi-million-dollar deals, and stay culturally relevant is exactly why Google signed a multi-year deal with Unwell Creative to create social ads and live event activations.
While there is a benefit to adding a revenue stream to the business, there is more upside from a creator formalising the ecosystem she’s already built: producers, editors, talent relationships, distribution channels, and access to the demographic every brand wants.
Here’s how I see creators, brands, and agencies navigating this new landscape:
Creators: Think beyond the next brand deal. Could you package your workflow, your team, and your audience access as a service? You don’t need to call it an agency; start thinking like one.
Brands: Reach is table stakes. The real value lies in creators who can deliver the whole system, including their production capabilities, storytelling know-how, and direct audience connection.
Agencies: The next level is collaboration, not control. Brands and creators want in early, so help them build it together.
Socially Updated
Instagram updates its ‘Restyle’ feature
has added a new feature called “Ride the Trend Now” under the Monetisation section for Pages.
now lets you draw doodles or drop stickers and emojis in DMs.
Updates have been introduced to the Restyle tool in Stories. By clicking the paintbrush icon in Stories mode, users can add, remove, or modify images, as well as edit videos with preset effects powered by Meta AI.
YouTube
is rolling out the Co-Post feature to more creators.
clarified that only creators not banned for copyright or severe misconduct may reapply for a new ‘Second Chance’ account, and only after a one-year wait.
announced its Likeness Detection tool expansion to all Partner Program creators. The tool safeguards your identity by detecting, managing, and requesting removal of videos using your face without permission.
TikTok
now lets you post subscriber-only photos.
now lets you press and hold to access more options for your videos
X
added an option to stop people from downloading your videos.
Snapchat
augmented reality OS now has in-app payments, permission alerts, and more.
The Dig
READ: It could be seen as a bold statement to say that YouTube will become the go-to platform for all of your viewers’ needs within the next couple of years. But after reading this article from the Hollywood Reporter, you start to get a sense of the strategic groundwork that YouTube is laying, especially in sports.
LISTEN: Our love/hate relationship with hyper-tailored algorithms is wreaking havoc in the comments sections and stunting progress in discussions, and in some cases, reducing them to nothing. Shameless explores the internet’s current dilemma: ‘What about me?’ and the demand that everything should relate to the self, and how this feeds into dangerous individualism territory.
WATCH: If you’re struggling as a creative, watch this.