The People Buying Super Bowl Ads Won't Have Jobs (And Other Truths About the Post-Influencer Economy)
Why LLMs are shifting culture faster than you think, what a German hip-hop conversation taught me about global marketing, and why the next generation of athletes will own their own media
Soul Purpose — Crate 002
The Complete Cultural Intelligence Drop
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Soul Purpose:
Field Notes From the Future
Why I’m Relaunching Soul Purpose & Why It Matters Now
I’ve spent three decades living at the speed of the remix running marketing for Columbia Records during the Fugees / Lauryn Hill / Destiny’s Child / Nas golden mid 90’s run, turning Ecko’s street-wear hustle into a billion-dollar movement, and selling an underground email called Soul Purpose (written under the alias Andy Platnum) before “newsletter” was even a business model.
I’ve brokered ideas and deals between rappers and royals, built social-media war rooms for Nike and Beats, and spun crate-dug sets on four continents as DJ Rich Cacao. Today, through Authenticated Ventures and Creator Mode Studios, I’m helping athletes, artists, and founders turn cultural capital into long-term value whether that’s launching AI-powered media properties, building IP-driven product ecosystems, or designing future-facing experiences from the blockchain to the basketball court. This is strategy, storytelling, and systems thinking—wired for what’s next.
Why Relaunch Now?
Because culture doesn’t pause and neither should your playbook.
Trends are now born in Discords, fed by algorithmic remix, and monetized before they hit the mainstream. If you’re not tapped in, you’re out of sync. If you’re not prototyping, you’re already behind.
Soul Purpose is your creative ops system designed for leaders, creators, and decision-makers who want to stay ahead and build what’s next.
Here’s what’s inside each drop:
CrateDug Briefings
Cultural signals before they break. Moves to make before they trend. Think insight you’ll drop in a meeting and watch the room shift.
Borderless Playbooks
Strategy with soul. Actionable frameworks to turn curiosity into capital personally, creatively, or corporately.
CTRL ALT Dispatches
On-the-ground intel from inside the salons—Dubai rooftops, Detroit listening bars, global idea labs where IP is born.
Soundtrack Links
Because every sharp idea needs a beat. Curated by DJ Rich Cacao to set your brain on fire.
Future Tools
AI workflows, speculative decks, and creative prototypes—get inside how we build at the edge of media, tech, and storytelling.
Inside the Room
Real people. Real projects. From athletes launching content empires to teachers turning ideas into digital goods—this is who’s shaping the culture you’ll be reacting to next year.
Soul Purpose isn’t a newsletter. It’s a signal.
Come curious. Leave rewired.
James Andrews
(yes, still the kid who went from Palo Alto computer labs to Dionne Warwick’s living room and never stopped crate-digging the future)
Stay in the Crate
Future drops move behind the paywall next week.
Upgrade now to keep every mix, memo, and field note in your inbox.
🏀 Why Athletes Are the Next Media Empires
(And What Advising Kevin Garnett Just Reminded Me)
TL;DR – The endorsement era is fading. The future is athlete-owned media. If you’re in sports, entertainment, or brand marketing, the next 18 months decide whether you’re a partner—or just a sponsor check.
Working with a client like Kevin Garnett has given me a front-row seat to something bigger than a content play. It’s a generational shift in how athletes move through the world—not just as icons, but as infrastructure. At Content Kings, KG’s studio, the real action isn’t just what’s getting recorded—it’s who’s owning the output. On any given Wednesday I might run into Allen Iverson, Matt Barnes, or J.R. Rider swapping stories that ESPN wouldn’t dare touch. And every taping? It fractures into podcasts, clips, ads, merch with zero league approval required.
This isn’t brand building. It’s cultural architecture.
The Three Waves of NBA Fame
Broadcast Era
Distribution: ABC / NBC
Revenue Play: Shoe deals and salary
Who Won: Jordan, Magic
Hip-Hop Era
Distribution: MTV and blogs
Revenue Play: Sneaker empires
Who Won: Iverson, Kobe
Creator Era (Now)
Distribution: TikTok, Twitch, on-chain fans
Revenue Play: Own the channel, own the equity
Who’s Winning: The NIL generation
Stat to sit with:
87% of Gen Z sports fans follow athletes before they follow teams.
(Source: Morning Consult, 2024)
From Endorsement to Ownership
Back in the day, the league controlled the story. When I produced B-Ball’s Best Kept Secret pairing NBA stars with hip-hop producers I had to fax lyrics to David Stern’s office for clearance. The NBA didn’t even play hip-hop in arenas. They literally created the Allen Iverson dress code to sanitize the culture.
Fast-forward to now? These athletes are founders, filmmakers, and distribution nodes. The ones winning aren’t just telling stories—they’re monetizing IP across platforms they own.
KG gets this. He understands “new fame” where bloggers become broadcasters, where streamers outdraw cable shows, where authenticity is currency. This isn’t about trying to get “back on TV.” It’s about bypassing it completely.
🎬 Creator Mode Studios + Content Kings Present:
NBA Summer League Bootcamp & Film Festival — Las Vegas, July 2025
We’re pulling back the curtain on what agencies never teach:
Turn your podcast into five distinct revenue streams
Negotiate equity over appearance fees—every time
Build a media ecosystem that rivals networks
This two-day bootcamp runs alongside the NBA Summer League where Creator Mode Studios and Kevin Garnett’s Content Kings host a Creator Camp and elevate the Summer League Film Festival at the Strip View Pavilion. Athletes are sharing short docs, feature films, and behind‑the‑scenes storytelling, with 60+ athlete-backed films already submitted .
If you traffic in influence agency, label, streamer, or VC this is your scouting combine for the future of talent. Be there July 10–20 for the bootcamp, and July 17–19 for the festival.
What This Means for Your Business
Brands: Stop buying access. Start co-producing with talent.
Talent Reps: Distribution strategy now matters as much as negotiation.
Startups/VCs: Athlete IP is the most undervalued asset class in media.
And then there’s the NIL wave. These kids are building media companies before college orientation. They’re digital natives with a built-in audience and zero tolerance for gatekeepers. A major NIL ruling drops in July, and it’s going to open the floodgates. You’re not just hiring a player—you’re partnering with a channel.
🌍 Global Echoes
I first realized the global depth of this movement in Cologne, Germany, walking the streets with DJ Jazzy Jeff. A journalist started talking hoops naturally, I expected Shaq or Kobe. Instead, he said, “I love Skip to My Lou and Half Man, Half Amazing.” He was referencing streetball legends from the AND1 mixtape era—players whose legacy spread not through ESPN, but bootlegs and broadband.
That moment stuck with me.
Because as we walked, people weren’t just recognizing Jeff—they were quoting his sample choices. They weren’t passive consumers. They were decoding the culture.
That same reverence? I feel it now in Dubai, Abu Dhabi and the GCC
Basketball is booming across the Middle East. The expat energy is real: Filipinos, Russians, young Emiratis—all in the gym, all building, all watching. The cultural heat is there. The fandom is sophisticated. And Adam Silver gets it.
That’s why this October, the NBA is bringing the Knicks and Sixers to Abu Dhabi—and we’ll be there.
Creator Mode Studios and Content Kings are curating experiences around the game, telling the deeper story behind the story. Not just what happens on the court—but what’s bubbling around it: sneaker culture, player-led media, basketball-as-bridge between global communities.
Abu Dhabi is where legacy teams meet next-gen fandom. We’re building the connective tissue.
🧠 90-Day Playbook for the New Athlete Economy
1. Flip the Deal Sheet
If you’re just cutting checks, you’re getting played. Audit every athlete contract. If there’s no co-owned IP or distribution, you’re leasing relevance.
2. Greenlight One Creator-Led Property
Forget branded content co-create a platform. A Discord server, podcast, or docu-series that pays out equity, not just likes. Think network, not campaign.
3. Measure the Right Metric
Shift your KPIs from impressions to immersion. Are you building community that buys, shares, and shows up or just farming views that scroll by?
4. Lock in for Vegas
This July, we’re rewriting the playbook live.
Creator Mode Studios × Content Kings present Creator Camp @ NBA Summer League, July 10–11 in Las Vegas.
Athletes. Creators. Operators. Media architects.
This isn’t a panel. It’s a scouting combine for the next influence economy.
The Post-Influencer Economy: Why Your Career Depends on Understanding This
Here's the brutal truth that should terrify every marketer reading this: if you don't have a pulse on where culture is going, especially with LLMs shifting culture at generative speed, you won't be able to make product bets fast enough. The people who keep buying Super Bowl ads? They won't have jobs.
We're in the post-influencer, post-creator economy moment, and it's coinciding with something fundamental: lots of cultures are fusing. Things are moving very dynamically. The influencer marketing industry reaches $32.55 billion in 2025 and 86% of consumers make purchases inspired by influencers at least once per year, but the systems we use to evaluate that investment are fundamentally flawed.
Here's the problem that's keeping CMOs up at night.
Your 40-year-old marketing director has to convince a 55-year-old CEO to spend money with someone who has 50,000 TikTok followers instead of buying a Super Bowl ad. But here's the reality: 19-year-old TikTokers and people in general aren't watching TV in the same way. The attention is now on YouTube, the attention is in other places, and these shows don't have the cultural relevance. Maybe the Super Bowl if they have Kendrick Lamar, but it has to be the right Super Bowl halftime show with the right talent.
The industry desperately needs something to measure—because "if you can't measure it, it's not real"—so we got trapped in follower counts as the primary metric. But follower counts are to influence what Nielsen ratings were to actual viewership: a dated proxy that misses the real story.
The disconnect is cultural, not technological.
I learned this lesson in the music industry. I would try to explain to my bosses at Columbia Records why a record was hot—why it was moving in the streets—and they wouldn't understand. If you're not in the culture, you can't see when something is trending. You miss why a record is doing what it's doing. The same dynamic exists with influencers today. The people writing the checks don't understand why these creators have cultural resonance, why their audiences trust them, why they drive behavior.
But here's what's really happening: we're witnessing the death of the attention economy and the birth of the connection economy.
78% of TikTok users bought a product after seeing it in creator content, compared to traditional celebrity endorsements that feel increasingly hollow. People can relate to creators. They've watched their journey. When a creator finally partners with Mercedes after talking about wanting to work with them for months, you see the authentic narrative. When your favorite basketball player suddenly appears with a random product, there's no context—just a big paycheck.
The fundamental shift is this: attention doesn't convert anymore. Connection does.
We're also seeing deficit-financed YouTube series emerging—creators and brands investing in substantial, higher-budget productions where initial investments exceed immediate revenue. Think television-quality productions built around creators who already have the community relationship. This isn't throwing money at influencers; this is building media properties around people who can actually move culture.
The metrics that matter are completely different from what we're measuring.
Here's what I see working with the smartest creators: it's not about follower count, it's about three things:
Content Production: What they actually create and how consistently
Community Engagement: Their ability to gather real community (not just followers)
Direct Audience Reach: Whether they can reach their audience without relying on Zuckerberg's algorithm
The new metric should be: Does this person have a Substack newsletter? A text messaging system? Can they actually reach their fans directly? I'd rather work with someone who has 5,000 people who show up every time than someone with 500,000 followers they can't consistently reach.
This is the connection economy in action. It's not about the size of your megaphone; it's about the depth of your relationships. The brands that understand this are already building those deficit-financed series, those long-term creative partnerships, those authentic collaborations that feel more like joint ventures than advertising campaigns.
Here's what's going to happen: they're going to have to become investors and media partners.
84.8% of brands found influencer marketing effective, but 30% of brands aren't measuring ROI. They're going to have to actually be in the business of making creators famous. In the same way Procter & Gamble and some of the other companies in the advent of TV took a bet on things, you've got to re-imagine the way you look at engagement and fandom.
But it's bigger than that. We're seeing brands finance entire YouTube series, build creative partnerships that look more like joint ventures, and invest in creator-driven media properties that may lose money initially but build long-term relationship capital. The smart money isn't buying ads from creators—they're co-creating content universes.
Most agencies aren't approaching this like A&R people. They're not betting on talent before they become famous—they're chasing whoever's already popular. By the time brands want to work with someone, the creator has already blown up and their rates have skyrocketed.
Here's what separates the agencies that will win from those that will get disrupted:
You need people with authoritative, commanding conviction who can walk into a client meeting and say, "This creator is going to be huge, and we need to invest in them now." Not "they don't have enough followers yet." Most marketing executives don't have the cultural fluency or the courage to make that call.
In 2024, influencers created 1.4 billion posts, generating $236 billion in Earned Media Value with an 8.4x return on investment. But those returns only work when you understand the difference between engagement theater and actual influence.
The shift from advertiser to partner changes everything.
49% of creators prefer long-term campaigns over one-off partnerships, and brand ambassador programs delivered the highest ROI this year. The brands winning aren't buying ads from creators—they're becoming media partners. They're structuring deals that make creators invested in long-term success, not just completion of deliverables.
Technology is about to accelerate this disruption exponentially.
63% of marketers are planning to use AI for influencer marketing, but AI is also enabling more people to become creators. The generative economy means anyone with a unique perspective and consistent execution can build an audience. The traditional gatekeepers—talent agencies, media companies, even platforms—are becoming less relevant.
What this means for your Q1 planning:
Stop thinking about influencer marketing as a tactic. Start thinking about it as talent development and media partnerships. The $1 trillion shift toward creators isn't just about budget reallocation—it's about fundamentally reimagining how brands build relationships with culture.
Brands that spend more than 40% of their marketing budget on influencer campaigns represent 25% of all marketers—they're not dabbling, they're all-in. But the next wave will be brands that finance creator-driven series, build long-term creative partnerships, and invest in connection over attention.
The brands that understand cultural resonance, that invest in creators before they peak, that build real partnerships instead of transactional campaigns—those brands will own the next decade of marketing.
The question isn't whether influencer marketing works. The question is whether you have the cultural intelligence and institutional courage to do it right.
Because while you're debating follower counts and CPMs, your competitors are building relationships with the people who will define culture for the next generation. They're moving from the attention economy to the connection economy. They're financing creative partnerships that look more like joint ventures than advertising campaigns.
And culture, as I've learned from music to fashion to sports, is the ultimate capital.
The measurement systems will catch up. Cultural intuition won't wait for them.
🎧 The Mixtape Drop
Music is the heartbeat of Soul Purpose. Each week, my alter-ego DJ Rich Cacao blends a brand-new set Ethiopian jazz into Bay-Area slappers into ‘80s synth so your ears stay as inspired as your mind.
Subscribe in the next 10 days and score an extra mix.
• Immediate access to this week’s crate soundtrack
• A Fourth-of-July Party Mix—built for backyard speakers and late-night fireworks delivered before the holiday if you upgrade by July 4.
What to Expect
This is the level of cultural intelligence and industry insight you'll get every week in Soul Purpose. We're moving into paid subscription territory soon, but if you're reading this, you're getting a preview of what's coming:
Deep cultural analysis that connects dots others miss
Industry intelligence from someone who's been in the rooms where decisions get made
Forward-looking frameworks you can apply immediately
Curated mixtapes that soundtrack the conversations
Exclusive community access for subscribers who want to engage beyond the newsletter
This is Crate 002 your last free taste before we build something special together.
My dinner table might include an advertising executive, a royal, a venture capitalist, and someone formerly incarcerated, because that's my world. I run with humans doing interesting things across every boundary you can imagine. This newsletter reflects that diversity—the intersections where the most interesting conversations happen.
I apologize to those I may not have shown up fully for in recent years. I'm a work in progress, bringing both victories and vulnerability. I've been growing through COVID, family, everything that's reshaped us all. But I'm more interested in attunement than achievement now, more devoted to legacy than legend.
Ready to join the community? Hit subscribe and become part of the conversation that's shaping culture at the intersections where the most interesting things happen.
Because culture is the ultimate capital. Own it, remix it, use it to build the future.
What resonated most with you in this crate? What are you seeing in your world that others are missing? Hit reply and let's start a conversation. I read and respond to every thoughtful message.