Good morning. Now that the Super Bowl for football is over (keep reading for the creator highlights), it’s time to start prepping for the Super Bowl for people in marketing, tech, and creative fields: South by Southwest.

A bunch of the Publish team will be at SXSW next month. If you’ll be there too, fill out this short form so we can get together.

— Hannah Doyle 

The NFL’s Creator Strategy Intensifies

Jalen Hurts this, Kendrick Lamar that. The real standout of this year’s Super Bowl was the slew of creators we saw on-screen all weekend long.

• Alix Earle appeared in a Carl’s Jr. commercial reminiscent of the chain’s early 2000s marketing style. Earle also appeared in an ad for soda brand Poppi alongside fellow creator Jake Shane.

• Challenge creator Pierson Wodzynski, cooking creator Nick DiGiovanni, and sports creator Matthew Meagher each made their own Super Bowl-style commercial exclusively for YouTube’s AdBlitz channel (where it’s housing 100+ of this year’s ads).

• IShowSpeed and Kai Cenat led opposing teams (each stacked with creators and former football stars) in the NFL and YouTube’s Creator Flag Football Game on Saturday.

• Snap brought a group of creators including Katie Austin, Ross Smith, Jack Mancuso, and Treasure Wilson to the game in the platform’s first collab with the NFL.

• Brittany Broski led a pre-Super Bowl collab between makeup brand NYX and DraftKings for viewers to predict pop culture moments ahead of the game.

• Druski made a cameo in a celebrity-packed Dunkin’ commercial that ran seven minutes.

Big picture: The NFL hosted north of 150 creators across niches in New Orleans leading up to last night’s game, marking its largest creator campaign yet—and evidence that the league’s efforts to court creators, from launching resources for players-turned-YouTubers to aligning with digitally native brands and platforms, aren’t going anywhere.

And seems advertisers are following the NFL’s lead. Brand spending on influencer activations for this year’s Super Bowl increased between 25% and 35%, per Captiv8.

Why Salary Transparent Street Launched a Substack

Hannah Williams, the creator of the media company Salary Transparent Street, has built a following of over 2 million people making short-form videos on pay transparency and asking two big questions: What do you do and how much do you make?

Since launching Salary Transparent Street (STS) in 2022, Williams has expanded her business to include a salary database, a job board, a newsletter covering pay transparency laws and workplace tips, and a podcast with her partner, James. 

Now, she’s launching something new to meet the changing needs of her business: audience-backed subscriptions on Substack. Subscriptions are available for $6/month or $60/year and include exclusive content, members-only expert Q&As, and product discounts.

Here’s more on the move →

STS is trying to get ahead of unpredictable revenue.

• “97% of our revenue comes from brand partnerships and in this political landscape, our work is all about workforce equity,” Williams told us. “So we’re a little bit nervous about the budgets of partners that we want to work with this year.” 

• Williams added that less dependence on brand partnerships frees the team up to be more open in videos and podcast episodes.

On the timing: “For us, it's a new revenue stream.  I'm hoping the things that we can offer there, like exclusive content for the podcast and new episodes in this paid community, are a good [leverage point] that we've avoided for a really long time, but now it's just become inevitable,” Williams said.

Worth noting: Williams shared in a recent episode of her Two Cents podcast that STS made $1.6 million in gross revenue in 2024, up from about $1 million the previous year.

Zoom out: Williams joins a growing set of creators, like Your Rich BFF, who are using Substack not as a newsletter platform, but rather as a Patreon alternative. In the last year, the platform began rolling out live video and chat feeds—expanding the appeal beyond just written content.

👀 Creator Moves

• MrBeast is hiring a producer for branded content.

• Donut is looking for a video writer and researcher who knows cars + comedy.

• Aphmau’s YouTube production and merch company CatFace is hiring a senior video script writer.

Looking to bring on new team members? You can post opportunities on our (free) job board here.

🔥 Press Worthy

• Roblox announces that it paid creators $280 million last quarter, up 27% annually.

• Creator management company Whalar is launching a new talent division for athletes called Sixteenth Sports.

• Creator Brian Jordan Alvarez’s show English Teacher is renewed for a second season.

• Substack creator Emily Sundberg’s Feed Me newsletter is featured in the NYT.

• Elon Musk says he has no plans to buy TikTok.