The high influx of brand dollars into the creator economy poses a simple yet fundamental question: are these partnerships merely media buys seeking eyeballs, or opportunities for genuine creative expression?

“Brands approaching the creator economy purely transactionally are missing out on the opportunity to partner with creators in a way that is lasting, authentic, and genuine to the audience,” asserts Zach Blume, President of Portal A, an award-winning social and creator content company he co-founded in 2010. 

While most agencies scramble to aggregate creator reach and optimize for impressions, Portal A has spent 15 years building a different approach. In an environment where short sponsored reads and logo placements have become standard fare, Portal A focuses on elevating the partnership through deeper brand storytelling, narrative, and craft.

Today, the company partners with major brands and platforms including Google, YouTube, Target, Lenovo, AT&T, and Snapchat to develop premium content with creators that transcends the limits of conventional advertising approaches. For its work in the social space, Portal A has been recognized as Campaign’s Brand Entertainment Agency of the Year, Digiday’s Video Agency of the Year, and the Streamy Awards Agency of the Year.

“For a half century, there had been a system in place for how brands and networks created advertising and entertainment,” Zach explains. “When we got our start, it was just intuitive for us that we had to try something different and that the way agencies and production companies had been creating for traditional media would not be applicable for spaces like YouTube.” 

This insight drove Portal A to reimagine the entire production process for digital environments—beginning with the fragmented agency model itself.

Solving Fragmentation Through Integration

Portal A’s holistic approach addresses a critical inefficiency that still plagues much of the industry: the fragmentation of the creative process across multiple specialized agencies.

“Traditionally in the brand world, you have a creative agency that then hires a production company that then hires a post house, that then hires a media agency that hires a talent agency,” Zach details. “There ends up being 50 people on a call because so many players are involved. Seven different agencies, overhead across all, and the budgets spiral out of control.”

To streamline this convoluted process, Portal A has built an integrated model across its team of 40 handling all aspects of content creation in-house: creative development, content production, talent management, digital strategy, design and graphics, and post-production. This model allows them to maintain quality control throughout the process while reducing the bloat often accompanying multi-agency collaborations.

“We have a team of creatives who are all trained directors themselves,” Zach says. “We have an in-house production team that produces at any scale. Our in-house talent team works directly with all the creators we partner with, sources talent deals, and manages their participation. Our strategy team also uses insights and best practices to inform our creative process. All parts of the creative process are handled entirely through our in-house team.”

The only aspect Portal A typically doesn’t manage is media buying, which Zach notes is often unnecessary since distribution often happens naturally through the creators they partner with. This structural solution addresses the “how” of content creation, but Portal A’s vision extends beyond process efficiency to the very nature of creator content itself.

Championing a Creative Renaissance

In addition to solving structural problems, Portal A advocates for a fundamental shift in how brands approach creator partnerships—away from pure scale and toward meaningful storytelling.

“I see a blossoming of creativity happening in our space again,” Zach observes. “I am starting to see signs of creative life again where brands are willing to take big swings and bet on this space. We’re partnering with creators like Gawx Art, incredible filmmakers making high-quality storytelling—I think there’s an appetite for that type of creativity coming back.”

This creative renaissance is particularly important as viewing habits shift. “YouTube is now watched on TVs more than on phones, and is watched more than Netflix on TVs. In other words, YouTube is TV.” Zach explains. “There’s an appetite for narrative storytelling, not just pranks and stunts and vlogs and brain rot.” This shift in viewing habits demands a corresponding breakthrough in how success is measured.

Portal A’s recent “Creator Odyssey” project for Lenovo and Intel exemplifies this approach. The initiative brought together seven artists from around the world in a chain of creative collaboration, delivering both ambitious storytelling and authentic brand integration that transcends the standard sponsored content format.

Measuring What Matters

Portal A’s commitment to quality extends to its measurement of success. While viewership remains a top-line metric, it focuses more intently on indicators of genuine audience connection.

“We’re focused much more on metrics that indicate or represent enthusiasm versus just scale,” Zach explains. “We’re focused on metrics like audience sentiment, engagement rates, and share rates, as well as how these metrics compare against benchmarks. To us, without running a full brand lift study, this is the best way to measure whether we are reaching audiences on a deeper level than a simple view which can come and go as people swipe through their feeds.”

This nuanced approach to measurement challenges the volume-oriented metrics that dominate much of the industry, encouraging a deeper focus on content that resonates emotionally with viewers. To advance this vision beyond client work, Portal A has developed a dedicated program for creative exploration and development.

Independent Creative Investments

To further advance its vision of elevated digital storytelling, Portal A has developed an initiative called Moonshots, an independent investment program that supports creative projects with creators, outside of its core business of brand partnerships.

“Moonshots is a program to invest in independent projects with creators,” Zach explains. “It’s separate from our brand business, but it complements it because this work is interesting to our brand partners, and it’s a fantastic way for us to experiment with new formats. It’s a way for us to do creative R&D and invest in projects and talent we believe in.”

A recent Moonshot that Zach highlighted is Third Cultures with Jaeki Cho, an episodic Instagram and TikTok series exploring immigrant communities worldwide and the unexpected corners of food culture they’ve built. 

Another Moonshot project Zach mentioned is Fit Check with Drew Joiner, a series that lives across Drew’s social handles that dissects today’s biggest clothing trends through the lens of history to reveal how these looks made their way to the runway. 

The Moonshots initiative allows Portal A to experiment with new formats and collaborate with emerging talent without the constraints of brand requirements. It serves as both a creative laboratory and a pipeline for concepts that might eventually attract brand partnerships. 

“These independent projects with creators are ultimately properties that we take to brands,” Zach explains, adding that this initiative serves as primarily a creative exercise that might later attract commercial partnerships.

These independent investments represent just one component of Portal A’s forward-looking strategy.

Future Plans and Priorities

Another area of focus for Portal A is further developing their work with athletes, whom Portal A sees as creators themselves. 

Portal A has partnered closely with Stephen Curry, developing a range of projects like Five Minutes From Home for Curry’s YouTube and social channels with brands like Infiniti, Lyft, and Rakuten, as well as athletes like Adam Rippon, Carmelo Anthony, and Odell Beckham, Jr.

“This year, we’re continuing to explore the model of athletes as creators with partnerships with a new generation of stars, like Anthony Edwards,” Zach shared. “With Ant, we’re creating a series called Year Five that gives fans a real-time, inside view into his fifth season, and is released exclusively on his YouTube channel.”

Maintaining Independence Amid Industry Consolidation

As Portal A advances these initiatives, it navigates a market shaped by massive investment flows and industry consolidation. Portal A took on investment from its partners at Wheelhouse in 2019, but maintained control of the company.

“The creator and social space is being flooded with both brand and capital investment,” Zach observes. “It can become very appealing to maximize growth and scale at any costs.”

Against this backdrop, Portal A’s focus on independence and creative integrity takes on additional significance for the company. It’s where Blume feels like Portal A can differentiate itself in the space.

 “What we’re trying to do, and what’s important to me individually, is to remain true to what makes this space special, which is exploring a new era of creativity and storytelling,” Zach states. “As all the capital comes flying into our space, along with so much acquisition and consolidation, how do we maintain our independence and creative point of view?”

For Portal A, the answer lies in staying true to its founding vision: creating content that breaks through the noise online.

“We’re a small boat in a big ocean,” Zach acknowledges. “We love it that way. We’re focused on making lasting content that leaves a mark versus a quick hit as viewers scroll their phones. That’s our point of view. That’s our north star, always.”