In 2015, Evan Asano published the first forecast for influencer marketing, predicting the industry would reach $5-10 billion by 2020. Despite skepticism, his forecast proved accurate, defining his career, from working at the first YouTube network in 2010 to founding Mediakix in 2011 and now leading CreatorX, which launched in 2023.

CreatorX represents influencers in women’s lifestyle, family, and travel categories, helping them maintain their genuine voices while providing operational infrastructure for success. The LA-based agency was born out of Evan’s observation that creators were becoming media channels themselves. Evan explains: “The transformation in the last seven years has gone from social media to individuals really becoming social media channels with massive audiences.”

CreatorX also addresses the identity crisis that, as Evan has witnessed, begins when creators drift from their original content purpose, chasing trends or algorithms rather than staying true to what initially connected them with their audience. If the numbers become the primary focus, the genuine voice that attracted followers in the first place often diminishes. 

“When creators struggle, it’s because they’ve lost their genuineness and why they’re doing this,” Evan says. “If you don’t have a North Star of why you wanted to do this, what got you excited, then when times get hard, you’re going to struggle.”

CreatorX’s approach begins by helping creators clearly define their content category and target audience, establishing a foundation that serves as both creative guidance and a business strategy. When creators understand their unique value and audience connection, they can make more intentional content decisions rather than chasing fleeting trends that may alienate their core followers.

The impact of this guidance is evident in CreatorX’s results. One standout example is a creator Evan describes as “the type-B mom of the Internet.” In the year before signing with CreatorX, she earned just $10,000 from sponsorships. Under their management, she has grown to 600,000 followers on Instagram and a total of one million across all platforms. “She’ll do close to $500,000 in sponsorships this year, and it has changed her life,” Evan says.

Bringing the Balance

While helping creators maintain their genuine voice, CreatorX also addresses the operational chaos that continues to plague the creator economy. Despite the industry’s growth, Evan points out that the behind-the-scenes processes remain disorganized, contrasting them with the polished content audiences see.

“It’s as messy as ever behind the scenes,” he says. “In the early days, there was this promise by some of the influencer marketing platforms that they were going to clean this up, and this whole behind-the-scenes was going to be very white glove and very catered and very seamless. And it hasn’t, it hasn’t changed for a variety of reasons, and it’s messier than ever.”

The challenges are numerous and interconnected: convoluted communication threads with clients often spanning dozens of messages; overly complex creative briefs running 15 pages for 15-second ads; fragmented payment systems across eight different platforms; and unclear expectations between talent and management.

CreatorX addresses these challenges by applying the systematic approach Evan developed at Mediakix, where he established many of the industry’s first standard operating procedures. “I wanted to bring our lessons from Mediakix into that and also create some structure around what it means when we sign a client.”

This standardization brings clarity to the creator-manager relationship, which Evan notes is often poorly understood by both parties. “A lot of people don’t know what that means,” he says. “Creators often have worked with one or two talent management groups. A significant issue is that they often don’t know what they’re getting with talent management. And in a lot of cases, the talent management groups aren’t necessarily explaining or outlining or even knowing what they’re supposed to deliver to talent.”

From Transactional to Strategic Management

One of CreatorX’s core improvements is expanding the talent management relationship beyond merely securing brand deals.

“It’s come to the point that it’s become very transactional, where talent and creators now look at talent management as, ‘Hey, how many deals can you get me a month? What can I expect?'” Evan notes. “That’s the question we kind of hear the most about.”

While securing profitable partnerships remains essential, CreatorX encompasses broader strategic guidance. 

Evan shares an example of how CreatorX helped a successful TikTok creator expand to Instagram when she was hesitant to try the platform: “We have a creator who’s an incredibly successful TikTok skit creator. And she just, for whatever reason, didn’t think it would work on Instagram. We talked to her about it, and we’re like, ‘Look, we really need to push your content out.’ So we launched a channel on Instagram, and our fourth video got two million views.”

This strategic platform expansion, guided by CreatorX’s understanding of both the creator’s genuine content style and the technical requirements of different platforms, exemplifies their approach to management.

Transforming Brand Partnerships

On the brand side, CreatorX applies its industry expertise to address common misconceptions that lead to ineffective campaigns. Drawing on Evan’s decade-plus experience running influencer marketing initiatives for companies such as Meta, Uber, Amazon, and L’Oréal, CreatorX helps brands understand what truly drives campaign success.

“A lot of times brands can get stuck on one metric,” Evan explains. “They want to work with micro-influencers, but they don’t understand why. They read somewhere that it was important and micro-influencers perform better, but they don’t really understand what they’re doing or why that’s the case.” He emphasizes the importance of starting with clear campaign objectives rather than arbitrary metrics, and then designing influencer strategies that align with those goals.

CreatorX also advocates for greater creative freedom for influencers within brand partnerships. “If you look at the top thousand influencers on TikTok and Instagram, I’d say 80% of them got there because they have a creativity and an insight that other people don’t,” Evan points out. “Let them use that.”

This approach not only respects creators’ expertise but delivers better results. Evan shares that CreatorX now looks beyond traditional engagement metrics to examine “saves” on platforms like TikTok. “We look at saves on a campaign,” he notes. “If somebody’s saving a video, an ad, a sponsorship, that’s an incredible measurement point for success.”

Building Technology for Tomorrow

Looking toward the future, CreatorX is developing technological tools to address the persistent operational challenges of the creator economy. Evan says that these tools aim to streamline the complex processes behind influencer campaigns and talent management, creating more efficient systems for everything from communication to payments to content approvals.

“We’re testing internally and we want to get that out into the space,” he explains. “They’re really early prototypes, but something we’re excited about because these campaigns are just messy behind the scenes and we want to help clean that up.”

As Evan sums up, the creator economy stands at an important point in its development. While it has grown into a multibillion-dollar industry, some creators struggle to maintain genuine voices while managing complex business demands, and talent management often fails to provide the guidance needed for sustainable success.

To address these hurdles, CreatorX is building a model for talent management that supports both creative integrity and commercial success.

“We’re always excited and looking to find and sign new influencers,” Evan says about CreatorX’s future. “We have some new, up-and-coming influencers who we are super excited about getting into the space and growing with them.”

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