How Creators and Artists Build Brand Empires

Crafting content universes consumers can't resist

Far too often, brand marketing is reduced to a slide in a deck with lofty words like “mythology” and “ethos” typeset in a brutalist font. In 2025, though, the strongest brands are built on emotion. The best contemporary brand architects know the most effective modern marketing mythos comes from within.

That’s how top creators are building empires worth billions. Just ask MrBeast, the most-subscribed YouTube creator, who has built a brand so massive that his last eight videos have averaged nearly as many views as 2025’s Super Bowl. For successful creators, consistent lore drives bigger business than a consistent look and feel. Their brands are personal, but far more complex than the “personal brands” associated with LinkedIn profiles. They’re distinctive content universes people recognize and can’t resist stepping inside.

Since I founded the branding and content agency Star Quality in 2022, I’ve worked with many of the internet’s most influential creators, including the legendary and polarizing Trisha Paytas. Last winter, I directed a music video for a co-branded campaign between her podcast and Patreon that celebrated her community and legacy. I’d watched her career online for years, but developing the treatment made it clear how commercially powerful her brand had become.

There wasn’t a playbook, yet there was a clear blueprint mined from her archives and blended into something peak Trisha. Unlike creators who hop from trend to trend, Paytas is loved for her signatures: a meltdown turned meme, a fast-food mukbang or an oddly specific cosplay as Adam Sandler. These formats have become her brand pillars. Her affinity for Y2K high-femme aesthetics? Her brand palette. And her brand voice? An unfiltered stream-of-consciousness documenting her evolution from provocateur to wholesome mother of two.

Around the time our video dropped, she surprised audiences with an SNL cameo, announced Trisha Paytas’ Big Broadway Dream, and launched her “Eras of Trish” tour. Before this mainstream success, she effectively underwent a rebrand. In 2023, she launched her podcast Just Trish, where early guest Dr. Drew joined her for an unvarnished conversation about the mental health struggles that defined her past. That willingness to own her story, paired with her all-pink-everything/manifest-until-it-happens persona, fortified her brand with an authenticity most creators never achieve. Her transparency turned passive viewers into brand advocates.

A fit for Gen Z fashion sense

Emma Chamberlain, Gen Z’s reigning fashion authority, took a different route. Her first video was a thrift haul edited in her high school bedroom. Eventually, the fashion world’s gatekeepers caught up. As she grew from meta-ironic vlogger into Louis Vuitton guest and Met Gala correspondent, Chamberlain shared less, taking extended breaks from YouTube in 2022 and periodic months-long pauses. Her absences work to her advantage. They create mystique—the same kind A-list actors leverage when they surface only to promote something worth caring about.

Instead of losing relevance by posting less, she created scarcity and rose above her peers while redirecting attention to channels she could monetize more strategically. Her approachable persona became next-level aspirational. To satiate fans, she fed them surreal editorial shoots from her Chamberlain Coffee brand or sent them to her podcast on Spotify, where she likely commands a bigger share of ad revenue. All these ventures still carry her humor, artistic vision, and high-low tone that have kept fans orbiting her since her first upload.

In other industries, the tension of building brands hits different. Music labels still push artists to act like creators, churning out trend-based videos, viral lip syncs and Apple dances. Yet audiences can smell executive intervention from 100 miles away.

Shout out to the ‘farmies’

That’s why HorsegiirL, a Berlin-based DJ in a freakishly articulated horse mask, stands out. Her project is a tongue-in-cheek piece of performance art with thumb-stopping visuals and humor so self-aware it invites everyone in on the joke. With creative direction by Hella Schneider and visuals by NMR.CC, her Coachella set was an elaborate, escapist, hay-filled meme bridled by genuine musical talent. It was more memorable than any of her electronic peers.

In the months since her desert debut, she’s almost doubled her following of “farmies” on Instagram, growing her handle by 76 percent. They’re there for the music, but also the mythology she builds in posts with her late mannequin lover, tributes to animal legends like Bugs Bunny and her ironic joie de vivre.

No matter if you’re a mother, a fashion icon or a horse girl, the most valuable thing a creator—or any brand—can own is a story that feels cohesive and true. Sometimes the unreal is relatable, and other times mystery drives interest. Evolution is rewarded when it feels earned.

The brands that break through are the ones willing to show the mess, humor, and a memorable edge. So maybe skip the horse mask, the iced latte, the pink G-Wagon—find your own and build a world so self-assured everyone wants to step inside.