Former Microsoft, Expedia, and Hasbro executive Jamie Gutfreund is challenging traditional approaches to creator marketing with her consultancy Creator Vision, launched last year. The firm fuses corporate strategy and influencer marketing to help marketers maximize their ROI in the creator economy.

Jamie’s path to entrepreneurship was shaped by her time as a CMO for both brands and agencies. As an early adopter of creator marketing, she saw a gap in how brands approach it.

“Most brands don’t have an overall creator strategy. They are highly executional – moving from individual campaign to another individual campaign, which leaves very little opportunity to establish best practices and benchmarks,” she explains.

Creator Vision helps brands shift from relying solely on traditional advertising to executing creator marketing at scale. Its capabilities enable brands to optimize creator selection, identify best-in-class agency and measurement partners, and integrate commerce effectively.

“At Whalar, I helped global brands establish effective creator marketing strategies,” Jamie explains. “But as an agency executive, I wasn’t completely neutral—I had something to sell. This realization drove my shift from the agency side to independent consulting, where I could provide brands with unbiased guidance tailored purely to their needs.”

The founder believes her dual perspective distinguishes Creator Vision in an emerging consultancy category. 

“I’ve been in the same role as a buyer,” Jamie notes. “I understand what it’s like to invest and put your reputation and company’s business on the line to decide to embark on creator marketing.”

Creator Vision guides technology stack selection and partner evaluation, leveraging Jamie’s industry connections to identify optimal solutions. 

“I make it my business to know the best of the best,” she says. “I can help orchestrate the most sophisticated creative and martech stack available.”

Independent Advisory Role

In its first year of operation, Creator Vision has diversified its client base beyond traditional brand consulting, moving into political strategy and product development integration. The consultancy operates across three primary service areas: brand strategy, agency consulting, and industry thought leadership.

Recent projects showcase the firm’s range. “I’ve helped develop strategies for some super PACs and helped them figure out the right approach to reach specific audiences,” Jamie says. In these engagements, she functions as a general contractor, overseeing agency selection and measurement implementation.

For established brands, Creator Vision’s work extends beyond marketing strategy. A recent project for a major beauty brand involved evaluating existing partnerships for efficiency gaps and developing organizational structures. 

The firm has also integrated creators into product development, establishing what Jamie describes as “a giant global focus group and research team” for a large retailer.

The consultancy maintains strict independence in its business model. “I don’t make money from creators,” Jamie points out. “My goal is not to be in a position where I’m making money from the individual creators.”

Instead, she serves as an informal advisor to many creators while generating revenue through brand consulting, agency go-to-market strategy services, and thought leadership initiatives, including research partnerships with The Harris Poll and as a regular contributor to Forbes.

Legacy Brands Still Struggle with Creator Marketing Integration

Despite increasing investment in creator partnerships, Jamie believes many established companies fail to maximize their return on creator marketing spend. The Creator Vision founder points to outdated approaches and organizational silos as key obstacles to success.

“Many companies are investing larger and larger amounts of money into the creator economy and then evaluating it or measuring it without it being executed to its full potential,” Jamie says. 

She characterizes some legacy companies as merely “tolerating” the creator economy, treating it as traditional influencer marketing rather than a distinct channel requiring new strategies.

Recent research, The Creator Rosetta Stone, conducted by Creator Vision in partnership with The Harris Poll, exposes significant gaps in brand-creator relationships. “85% of creators say they never hear back from brands about how they evaluate their work,” Jamie notes. This lack of feedback creates a cycle of inefficiency, preventing brands and creators from optimizing their partnerships.

“For many brands, legacy organizational structures can limit the impact and ROI of their creator marketing investments,” Jaime says. “One example was a global retailer investing in creator marketing, yet their efforts were disconnected from a new app designed to drive conversions—missing an opportunity to fully leverage their investment.”

Jamie also touches on the common friction point of creative freedom. 

“When creators say, ‘I need more creative freedom,’ they’re often expressing a desire to share valuable insights about their audience—the community brands are trying to reach,” Jamie explains. “Creators know their audiences better than anyone, but they’re rarely given the chance to offer input on the creative approach, the platform strategy, or the community itself. Allowing them to share this perspective can make brand messages feel more natural and impactful.”

Creator Marketing Set for Strategic Shift

Jamie identifies contextual partnerships and enhanced content discovery as key growth areas for the industry.

“There’s a move to go beyond the endemic category and to find different ways to engage your audience,” Jamie explains. She points to performance cycling company ASSOS’s successful strategy of partnering with Formula 1 drivers who cycle, reaching new audience segments through non-traditional channels.

Jamie stresses the importance of diversifying creator partnerships across the marketing funnel. “Where most brands miss is the consideration phase, that mid-range and how they’re helping someone go from awareness to conversion,” she says. This middle-funnel content includes product usage tutorials, care instructions, and audience engagement opportunities.

Jamie is particularly optimistic about the emerging role of found content and AI-powered discovery platforms. 

She cites Catch+Release, which combines AI search capabilities with human curation to source user-generated content (UGC) for major campaigns. The platform has already delivered results for prominent brands, including Nike and Dove’s “Hard Knocks” Super Bowl campaign.

“UGC gets a bad rap. It’s usually viewed as less than stellar content, but it can be very premium,” Jamie notes. 

The platform also provides additional income opportunities for global content creators. 

Industry Shifts Focus to Infrastructure and Artificial Intelligence

Creator Vision’s growth strategy focuses on developing overlooked segments of the creator economy, especially in building business infrastructure and integrating AI to improve future decision-making. For example, brands can leverage partners like Glystn to analyze thousands of comments across individual posts, gaining insights into content performance and audience preferences.

The consultancy also sees significant opportunities in affiliate marketing. “Affiliate is getting increasingly more sophisticated. They have access to some of the best performance data of any campaign execution,” Jamie says. She views affiliate data as a tool to enhance broader creator strategies by identifying high-converting partnerships.

Aside from creator partnerships, Jamie highlights the expanding B2B ecosystem. 

“There is an enormous ecosystem of lawyers, accountants, agents, measurement companies, AI capabilities,” she notes. “You’re seeing some big tech players get more involved.” She points to Adobe’s recent launch of a content authentication tool as an example of how major technology companies are strengthening creator economy infrastructure.

Jamie also highlights the “merging of Hollywood, advertising, and the creator economy.” She points to format-driven shows finding success across multiple platforms, citing examples like Reesa Teesa’s “Who TF Did I Marry?” transitioning from social media to television.

“Creator content is often seen as a transactional tactic, yet it represents a profound shift—an opportunity for people to make a living from their own creativity. Creativity is a human right, Jamie says. “It doesn’t matter where you were born or went to school; if you can express your creativity, you now have a way to build a career.” 

Jamie advocates for greater recognition of creator content as a meaningful art form, emphasizing that the creator economy allows more people to express their creativity and make that shift toward sustainable livelihoods.