The New Rules of Selling In: A Guide to Creator Sponsorships

“It’s like people only do things because they get paid. And that’s really sad.” — Garth

ZINE has its first sponsor.

As I think about media dynamics and business strategy for a living, I’d be a hypocrite to bury the lede or pretend this doesn’t warrant some public reflection.

So here’s a piece about creator corporate sponsorship brought to you by a corporate sponsor. (Our project will be in your inbox later this month. And if you ever want to jam on a special project like them, reach out.)

The creator economy promised financial freedom through lowered barriers to entry and democratized tools. What it delivered instead was a trap: algorithmic serfdom dressed up as creative independence. We traded bosses for metrics and now obsess over the dashboard. We’ve been captured by audiences, which now puppeteer our behaviors both consciously and unconsciously. And we now pray to an algorithm, starving for organic reach.

Platforms change the rules mid-game, shadow-ban without explanation, and treat creators as free content machines.

Substack isn’t concerned with my success as a creative… they’re only concerned with my success as an entrepreneur, handing over a bigger and bigger cut of my payout.

Historically, “selling out” meant abandoning one’s values for the paycheck. A musical artist would produce music they knew would sell better — even if it wasn’t their style or wasn’t what they wanted to put out into the world. It was a compromise. A dilution of integrity. Creative pollution. Major labels would take on creative control to help maximize sales, turning the artist into the real product.

But this “sell out” framing belongs to an era when artists had a bit more infrastructure or at least other options. There once were indie labels, advances, grants, public funding, residencies, physical media sales, public broadcasting, non-PhD university teaching gigs, media and arts journalism gigs, and cheaper rent, tuition and health insurance, all allowing for bigger bets on oneself.

Now? That infrastructure is gone and the working class artist is nearly extinct. The starving artist is a malnourished skeleton. Not because we’re any less creative — a separate convo — but because those resources are dried up, cut and de-funded. Today, the proportion of working-class actors, musicians and writers has shrunk by half since the 1970s. At the onset of COVID-19, the arts economy shrank nearly 2x vs. the overall U.S. rate of decline. Over 600,000 arts jobs vanished since.

Selling out was once an icky short cut because there were other lush paths or support. But today, corporate injection is one of the few remaining routes left for creative stability and sustainability. Sponsorships, reaching the top percentile of paid followership, full-time employment subsidies or good ole nepotism are what’s left.

Today, unlike previous generations, corporate support isn’t the enemy. The absence of any support is.

Now, taking money from a brand that aligns with your work isn’t exactly selling out. It’s survival. And honestly? Kind of a flex.

So the script has flipped.

“Sell Out” is no longer a slur.

Look at celebs. The famous are no longer just lending their faces to products, they’re manufacturing their own. And, most evident of this shift, they’re standing up their own agencies. Ryan Reynolds, Reese Witherspoon, Tony Hawk, Jimmy Fallon, Pitbull, Kevin Hart, Kristen Bell, Michael B. Jordan, and Kendrick Lamar all cosplay as Don Draper. Look no further for a signal that advertising, celebrity and the arts have all melted into one another.

As Will Cady puts it,

“Whether creatives entered the house of brands because we wanted to or we had to, the fact is we are here.”

As a result, “Selling In” is now the move.

WTF is Selling In?

“Selling in” is when you accept corpo cash from a position of power, not desperation. If selling out is abandoning your values or audience for the bag, selling in is maintaining your values and creative integrity while accepting funds from those who need what you’ve built, only further nourishing your work. The most profound opportunity here is to leverage that cash to seed your vision and values you hold into culture and into the org you’re jamming with.

As Cady continues,

“Artists telling artists not to play with brands is artists telling artists not to touch the dials that shape culture. The idea of ‘selling out’ — that artists are not supposed to play with brands — is an illusion that keeps artists hands away from the levers of power. Don’t buy it.”

With legacy media channels’ effectiveness in question (who doesn’t use an ad blocker or who still watches cable?), new methods of reach and influence are required. A side project like ZINE is now depended upon by a $7B tech behemoth. I don’t know if that says more about the grim state of legacy advertising or about the success of ZINE. Let’s call it a split?

Selling in isn’t semantic gymnastics to justify the cash. Selling in acknowledges that brands are and remain culturally desperate, and independent creators now hold authority corpos can’t manufacture themselves.

“Selling in” is not about the creative paying dues to exist in a world of relevancy and reach, but the corporate paying rent to exist in the creative’s.

A critique here is that corpo partnerships normalize the capture of indie media, where creative voices become just more marketing channels. I hate to admit it, but I think that system has already won. Indie media success without institutional support or thousands of paying die hard fans is just not easily obtainable this moment. The choice isn’t between white-knuckling lone wolf independence or corporate capture. It’s accepting the opportunity when it arises to secure one of the few open-minded partners with boundaries, and to maintain integrity within the system.

There’s an alternative to selling out.

New Rules: How to Sell In Without Selling Out

If you’re going to work with corpos and corpos, you’re going to work with artists and creatives, here’s what matters. These aren’t biblical laws for all to obey, but my personal non-negotiables, which now are all checked — evidence that this dynamic is possible.

01. Brand Coherence is Mandatory

If it’s not clear why a brand would be showing up in your world, the partnership will do more harm than good. I’ve shoo’ed away ad offers as they’ve made no sense or because I wasn’t a believer. The two brands need to exist in the same world.

02. Reject Corporate Capture

Editorial control stays with the creator. Always. The sponsor is there because of the creator’s material pre-sponsorship. Any influence ruins the work they want to align themselves to. The moment an outsider touches creative, frequency or volume... you’ve done for. This is the line. Your editorial mission precedes their KPIs.

03. Disclose Immediately & Obviously

Transparency isn’t a legal obligation you begrudgingly meet with tiny text or #ad. Transparency is how trust is maintained. Tell your audience directly, early, and clearly. Explain why you said yes. Buried disclosures are admissions of shame. (See this piece.)

04. The Money Must be Meaningful

(From a place of privilege...) don’t accept sponsorships that barely cover the basics or doesn’t respect the value of your effort. If a payment doesn’t materially improve the output — more research, better production, more value for the audience — it’s not worth it. Money for money’s sake isn’t it. Ideally, outside funding doesn’t just maintain the status quo, but it unlocks new initiatives and collaborators. Net-new, up-leveled output is the priority.

05. If It Feels Wrong, It’s Wrong

Some partnerships just shouldn’t happen. Trust the gut. If something about the deal, the brand or the dynamic feels off or like a stretch — even if you can’t articulate why — pass respectfully.

The Reality

I started ZINE to make sense of cultural change and our relationship to markets and media. To resist the spell of trending sensationalism and the lure of the dashboard. To favor more meaningful shifts in society and to analyze rigorously. To remember the human. To question status-quo-ism and to call out cultural and corporate hypocrisy.

Taking on a sponsorship doesn’t change that editorial and creative mission — it validates and fuels it. This means more investment in the work, more partners, and more time spent on ideas that matter instead of ideas for scale or monetization.

I am so excited for the work that’s coming, and in this case, only possible with outside support.

This upcoming partner (or whoever’s next) supports ZINE because we represent something they want proximity to. They’re betting on our credibility, our intellect, our cultural position.

That’s not about a quick shot at monetization, that’s a testament to what we’re building and the rare, shrinking opportunity to grow it.

Thank you for supporting ZINE.