Christian Liquigan joined influencer marketing agency Stargazer as CEO just over a month ago, but he’s wasting no time putting his stamp on the company’s future direction. Liquigan envisions Stargazer becoming a leader in empowering creators to take control of their data and relationships within the burgeoning creator economy.

“The vision for the company is really to have creators have full autonomy over their digital presence,” Liquigan says. “We aim to revolutionize the way creators engage with their audiences and partners, ultimately shaping a more equitable and sustainable ecosystem for all stakeholders.”  

Creators As Data Marketplaces? This Company Has A Bold Plan To Reshape Industry Power Dynamics.

Democratizing Data for Creators

At the core of Liquigan’s vision is developing tools that allow creators to monetize their data, rather than agencies or platforms using ML to build personas. “But I think at the genesis of it, we really want to give creators the opportunity to monetize their own data, “he explains

Liquigan sees significant potential for creators to generate revenue by positioning themselves as data marketplaces and monetizing insights about their audience, content performance, and overall digital presence. “Right now, typically when working with creators, you work with [them] for a specific brand deal, and then it’s usually a one and done,” he says. “We would love to give the opportunity to creators to essentially act as their own data marketplaces and sell their data to brands/agencies.”

This vision represents a philosophical shift in the creator economy power dynamics. Rather than having their data siphoned off as a byproduct of brand partnerships, creators could take an active role in packaging and monetizing that information directly to marketers hungry for such insights. Stargazer could play a key role in facilitating those data marketplace transactions.

“We want creators to essentially be their own DMPs(data marketplaces) to monetize their data aside from brand deals, merchandise, affiliate, etc.,” Liquigan explains.

By democratizing data ownership and monetization, Stargazer aims to unlock a new revenue stream for creators while also providing brands with a transparent, direct pathway to rich audience insights. It’s a potential win-win that could reshape the fundamental dynamics of the industry.

Solving Key Industry Challenges  

In addition to empowering creators, Liquigan aims to help brands overcome some of their biggest hurdles in the creator marketing space – particularly around scalability, measurement, and trend forecasting.

On the scalability front, he notes: “Scale is the name of the game at the moment. When you think of challenges that brands are facing specifically, it’s ‘yes, you’re working with a creator to create one to maybe three pieces of content, but how do you create 30 pieces of content working with [that] creator?'”

Stargazer has already made strides in solving this through an emphasis on user-generated content. “We’ve really worked hard at Stargazer to focus on scaling that content as well,” Liquigan says. But he envisions taking it a step further by developing new tools to systematize high-volume content creation between brands and creators.

Measurement has long vexed marketers eager to understand their return on investment from influencer campaigns. “Measurement has historically been one of the biggest challenges for brands in terms of working with influencers,” Liquigan observes. “They want to see if there is a lift in sales.And it’s hard to know that without affiliate links or direct links to purchasing a product or service.”

While he doesn’t claim to have definitively solved the measurement riddle, Liquigan says Stargazer takes a multi-pronged approach, including benchmarking against a brand’s own historical performance, building advanced attribution funnels, and potentially leveraging data flowing from the envisioned creator data marketplaces.  

Tapping Into Trends Through Creators

As for staying ahead of trends, Liquigan believes creators themselves offer an indispensable frontline perspective that brands need to embrace: “We want to work with creators and figure out what they are hearing/seeing on the platform that no one else is? And those are the sort of things we think of because they’re going to know their audience and the platform more than anyone else because they spend the most time on that platform as well.”

This emphasis on authentically embodying creators’ voices and tapping into their intuitive platform mastery represents a sharp break from the old approach of force-fitting branded messaging through influencer channels. “We always talked about how a blank brief for creators is the best brief,” Liquigan says. “Many times brands want to have control over how creators communicate to [their] audience, and we want to relinquish that control by providing guidelines, but giving the opportunity for creators to go ahead and say, ‘this is the best way I would communicate to my audience.'”

Bridging Brands and Creators 

While still early in his tenure, Liquigan is clearly taking a thoughtful, strategic approach to addressing some of the creator economy’s biggest friction points and opportunities. By centering Stargazer’s mission around data empowerment and deep respect for the creator’s voice, he aims to create more transparent, equitable partnerships between brands and talent.

“It’s important for companies such as Stargazer to kind of help bridge that gap,” Liquigan states. “Many times we spend a lot of our conversations educating both sides of the spectrum in terms of how to work best with creators, and [for] creators, how to work best with brands.”

He acknowledges it’s an ongoing learning process for all parties involved. Brands often want to exert too much control, while creators can sometimes fail to understand brand objectives and constraints. “It’s like any relationship, you have to figure things out.” Liquigan says. “It’s up to us to open those lines of communication across all parties involved.”

Ultimately, Liquigan hopes Stargazer can help forge a more balanced, reciprocal dynamic by giving creators the tools and leverage to be truly empowered partners. “We want to make sure more than anything else that we’re making an impact both [for] creators and brands, and making their jobs easier so that they’re able to reach their goals,” he says.

It’s an ambitious vision for an industry still very much in its infancy. But by combining pragmatic solutions to key operational challenges with a philosophical reframing around creator data rights, Liquigan has clearly mapped an intriguing path for Stargazer’s evolution. If he can make that roadmap a reality, it could catalyze major shifts in how the creator economy operates.