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Lowe's CMO Jennifer Wilson. Photo: Lowe's
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Major retailers that traditionally spent a lot of their advertising budgets on TV have been leaning into working more with creators. One of the latest examples is home improvement giant Lowe’s, which is making a big push to team up with handy influencers.
Through a “home improvement creator network” launched last month, Lowe’s is setting up custom virtual stores for creators who film do-it-yourself projects, such as renovations or planting a garden. Creators can use the storefronts to promote Lowe’s products they use and get a cut when followers make a purchase.
So far 17,000 creators have set up storefronts, and Lowe’s hopes to grow that figure to 50,000 over the next two to three years.
Jennifer Wilson, Lowe’s chief marketing officer, said the launch is part of the company’s effort to court Gen Z and Gen Alpha shoppers. Lowe’s has also been focused on growing its e-commerce business, and Wilson says creators can help drive more people to its website.
“So much of consumption of content is happening scrolling across social media,” Wilson said in an interview. “Creators are really the new trust infrastructure. They are helping consumers understand what products and services they should be interested in.”
Lowe’s has worked with creators before, typically through individual deals with influencers and celebrities including Tiffani Thiessen, the “Beverly Hills, 90210” star who has 2.4 million followers on Instagram and is an avid gardener. The new shopping features build on those deals by adding a way for the company to quickly expand its creator roster.
Lowe’s is teaming up with everyone from niche creators with around 20,000 followers up to mega influencers like MrBeast, who has 413 million YouTube subscribers and uses his store to showcase materials and tools to recreate obstacle courses featured in his videos.
Still, it’s long been challenging for retailers like Lowe’s to measure how effective creator marketing campaigns are at driving sales. For now, Wilson says Lowe’s is focused on how much revenue is coming in through creators’ online storefronts, which is straightforward to measure. But Lowe’s also wants to figure out a way to track whether creator campaigns are boosting sales in its bricks-and-mortar stores, which remains difficult to do.
“There are a lot of agencies and measurement companies who say they have methodologies, but I don’t think it’s been standardized at this point,” Wilson said.
Here’s what else is going on…
Deals & Debuts
See The Information’s Creator Economy Database for an exclusive list of private companies and their investors.
Fox News announced a licensing agreement with politics podcast “Ruthless” whose audience is men between the ages of 18 and 45. Porter Berry, the president and editor-in-chief of Fox News Digital, will also add “new media” to his role, which the company said reflects shifts in how viewers watch content.
Roblox launched a licensing platform to make it easier for IP rights holders, starting with companies such as Lionsgate and Netflix, to partner with Roblox creators who want to incorporate shows like “Stranger Things” into their virtual worlds.
Audioboom Group, the fifth largest U.S. podcast publisher, is acquiring U.K. podcast network Adelicious for as much as $7.4 million (£10 million).
Knot, a Mumbai-based fast-fashion delivery startup, raised $3 million in pre-Series A funding led by Kae Capital. The startup offers virtual try-on features, short-form product recommendation videos and one-hour delivery times.
Chirp, a new link-in-bio startup, launched on Wednesday. Creators and artists can use Chirp to create landing pages that they can link on their social media accounts, featuring custom fonts, product links and recommendations.
Lightricks, which develops AI video models and owns editing apps such as Facetune, announced an update to its open-weights video model that will allow it to generate videos up to a minute long. (For comparison, Google’s Veo 3 video model produces 8-second clips.)
Creator Corner
⚽ Casemiro Miguel,a Brazilian creator who runs a YouTube channel CazéTV with 22 million subscribers, nabbed the broadcast rights for all 104 matches of the 2026 World Cup. Matches will also still air on Brazil’s TV Globo channel. Last year, CazéTV struck a deal with the NFL to broadcast the league’s first-ever game in Sao Paulo. Major sports leagues are increasingly looking to creators to develop streaming programming to complement traditional game broadcasts.
Gabby Windey, a reality TV star who appeared on “The Bachelorette” and “The Traitors,” will host “Love Overboard,” a new reality dating series that will premiere on Hulu produced by podcast host Alex Cooper’s media company.
Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal, the co-hosts of the “Acquired” podcast, interviewed JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon at Radio City Music Hall in New York on Tuesday night.
Joanna Stern, a senior personal tech columnist at the Wall Street Journal, launched a newsletter on Beehiiv to share her “adventures” writing a book about AI. She’s currently on book leave from the Journal for the next few months.
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