Gabe Gordon has been doing this for 14 years. His agency, Reach, is the agency of record for Nestlé, Unilever, General Motors, and a handful of other brands whose marketing budgets would make your head spin. He's the one building the shortlists. He's the one on the phone with the CMO. He's the one deciding which creators get the call—and which ones get ghosted.

I sat down with him to pull back the curtain on everything creators never get to see: how campaigns actually get planned, what separates a long-term partner from a one-and-done, and what you need to do right now if you want to stop waiting for deals to come to you.

Some of it confirmed what I already suspected. Some of it genuinely surprised me.

Every CMO Is Bullish on Creator Marketing Right Now

Let's start with the macro picture, because it matters.

When Gabe walks into a boardroom with a major brand CMO, the conversation isn't about whether creator marketing works anymore. That debate is over. The conversation now is about scale, accountability, and ROI. How much should we be spending? How do we prove it's driving actual business results—not just vanity metrics?

Here's what most creators don't realize: creator marketing isn't just sponsored posts anymore. Gabe says it now touches 60% of paid social content for some of his clients. It's fueling CRM strategies, affiliate programs, direct sales. Brands like Sephora are taking their own customer databases and turning loyal consumers into affiliate creators. The line between "influencer" and "customer" is disappearing.

And when it comes to AI eating the marketing budget? Gabe's take is worth hearing.

"AI is eating more of the lunch of traditional advertising, not creators. Consumers love people, they hate advertising."

Your job—telling a brand story in a real, relatable way through a trusted voice—isn't going away. If anything, the CMOs he works with are more committed to creator partnerships than ever. What they're demanding now is just more proof that it's working.

The Fragmented Landscape (And Why It Matters to You)

Before we get into how to get deals, you need to understand who's actually calling you—because it's not always clear.

When an agency reaches out, are they the agency of record on a long-term retainer? A PR agency running a one-off campaign? An influencer-specific shop that was hired for a single activation? It matters, because each one has a different level of access to the brand, a different budget, and a different ability to grow the relationship with you.

Gabe says the fragmentation is still massive. Most brands have an average of just two internal people overseeing creator marketing, and those two people are getting pitched from every direction—media agencies, PR shops, influencer platforms, retailers with their own affiliate networks. No single partner has the full picture.

What this means for you: a brand reaching out through three different agencies simultaneously isn't coordinating. Each agency has been tasked with a specific thing. So don't assume that killing it for one agency is automatically going to translate into more work from the same brand. You often have to prove yourself in each silo separately—at least until you build a direct relationship with the brand itself. (More on that in a minute.)

How You Actually Get on the Shortlist

This is the part everyone wants to know.

Gabe's team builds creator shortlists before they ever reach out. By the time you hear from them, 80-90% of the internal approval process is already done. They've already pitched you to the brand. So the real question isn't "how do I respond to an outreach well?"—it's "how do I get in front of them before they even start looking?"

His answer was more straightforward than I expected.

Stop leading with your rate card.

Most creators, when they reach out to agencies or brands, open with a media kit and a list of packages. Gabe says this is backwards. Think about how agencies pitch brands. They don't walk in and say "here are our rates." They research the brand, study the feed, identify a gap, and come in with an idea.

Do that.

If there's a brand you genuinely want to work with, look at what they're doing with creator marketing. Who have they worked with? What's missing? What could you do that fits your audience and solves an actual problem for them? Come in with the idea first. That's what gets you remembered.

He also pointed out something I've been saying for years: being a real fan of the product always helps. "I actually use this and here's why I want to work with you" is a completely different conversation than "here's my CPM."

And one more thing he said that I want you to write down.

Get on LinkedIn.

Not to be an influencer there. To be visible to the people who buy creator partnerships. CMOs, brand managers, agency executives—they're on LinkedIn. And when a creator shows up there talking intelligently about their business, their growth, their marketing strategy, something shifts. You stop being a "talent" and start being a partner. Gabe said he's seen it change the entire trajectory of creator-brand relationships.

What Makes a Creator a Must-Book (And What Gets You Blacklisted)

Gabe and I have worked together before. April and I ran a host campaign through Reach, and one of the things I always appreciated was that when we delivered, they kept coming back. So I asked him directly: what actually makes a creator a must-book partner?

His answer: it comes down to the working relationship.

Brands don't want to be promoting 10 different shampoos. The real value of a sponsorship—beyond the reach, beyond the content—is the endorsement. That only works when it feels authentic and consistent. So creators who treat every deal like a transaction are leaving long-term money on the table.

The nightmare characteristics? He was diplomatic, but the through-line was clear: creators who are difficult to work with, who don't show up prepared, who don't go above and beyond on that first deal.

"Long-term partnerships are earned," he said. "You can't go in expecting a 12-video ambassadorship on the first deal. You have to show them what you're made of first."

This is exactly why I always tell my clients: your job isn't to land the deal. It's to blow the deal so far out of the water that the brand has no choice but to come back. Make your contact look good internally. Give them ammunition to sell you up the chain.

If you want a framework for how to do that systematically—including how to structure post-campaign reports that make brands look like geniuses to their bosses—Sponsor Magnet covers this in detail.

The Scope Problem (And How to Fix It)

Here's a frustration I hear from creators constantly.

A brand comes inbound asking for an Instagram post. The creator says, "Great, but I also have 80,000 newsletter subscribers, a private community of 3,000 highly engaged people, and a podcast with a dedicated following. Can we do a 360 partnership?"

The agency says: "Sorry, that's not what we sold through. It's Instagram only, take it or leave it."

I asked Gabe why this keeps happening, because it drives creators insane.

His answer: it's not about you. It's about how siloed the agency ecosystem is. The influencer agency was only hired to run Instagram. They didn't sell newsletter placements. They can't just add them unilaterally.

But here's what he said to do about it—and this is smart.

Offer it for free the first time. Not forever. Just this once. Say, "Hey, I want to include my newsletter in this. I'm not going to charge you for it this cycle. I just want you to see what it can do."

Now you've created a case study. You've given the agency something to bring back to the brand. And the next conversation isn't "can we add the newsletter?" It's "the newsletter drove X results last time—let's build it into the budget."

You're not giving away your work. You're making the next negotiation easier. There's a big difference.

Tariffs, AI, and Why Creator Marketing Is Recession-Resistant

I had to ask about the macro environment. Tariffs, supply chain uncertainty, ad budgets getting squeezed. How is this affecting the brands he works with?

His take: creator marketing is more insulated than you'd think.

The reason is simple: when brands compare the true cost of a creator partnership—talent fee plus zero production cost—against the true cost of a traditional ad campaign (talent, crew, production, media buy), creator wins by a mile. Most brands are still only counting the creator's fee in their ROI math. When you factor in production savings, the efficiency gap is enormous.

And AI? He doesn't see it as a threat to real creators. He sees it as a threat to "creator slop"—the kind of content that gets pumped out on platform briefs, ignored in the feed, forgotten in 48 hours. The brands worth working with aren't chasing volume. They're chasing connection.

"The real magic in working with creators is telling your brand story in a different way and connecting with an audience. Not just cheap content."

If you're building a real, engaged audience around a specific niche, you're building exactly what the brands Gabe works with are willing to pay a premium for.

The One Thing That Changes Everything

Near the end of our conversation, I asked Gabe what the single most impactful thing a creator can do to deepen their relationship with brands and agencies.

He didn't say "post more" or "build your followers."

He said: get on the phone.

Call the brand. Call the agency contact. Before the campaign, to align. After the campaign, to share results and pitch the next idea. Face-to-face at VidCon or Cannes if you can make it happen.

"It takes it from looking at a talent and looking at their channel passively to, 'hey, I know this person, I talk to them. I can see how smart they are.'"

You stop being a line item and start being a relationship. And relationships are the only thing in this business that compound over time.

If you're serious about building the kind of sponsorship business where brands keep coming back—and where agencies put you on their shortlist without you even having to ask—that's exactly what we work on inside Wizard's Guild. It's not about chasing more deals. It's about becoming the creator that brands fight to keep.

What's one brand you've been sitting on the fence about reaching out to? What's stopping you from picking up the phone?