Creative 100 2023: Influencers and Celebs Impacting Culture

The definition of celebrity is changing, as many of the walls that once separated fans from stars crumble. These figures who help make up Adweek’s 2023 Creative 100, from actors to online creators to musicians, are challenging norms and wielding their influence for good. Barrett Adair and Carter Leigh Creators An American Girl comeback: Adair and Leigh are responsible for the resurgence in a Gen Z product fixation that feels both blatantly ironic and deeply genuine. Their Instagram account @hellicity_merriman is a devilish play on Felicity Merriman, a doll in American Girl’s historical series who represents English colonial America. Since creating the account in 2022, the duo has consistently crafted content that presents the dolls’ images, fictional backstories and favorite products in a modern-day context. In one post, the words “me at my wedding” accompanied by an American Girl in pajamas is followed by “me at the downfall of tucker carlson,” which is paired with a doll in a lavish gown and tiara. Adair and Leigh, who both have careers in politics, said infusing their political takes into lifestyle content “skyrocketed (their) followership and engagement.” Monetizing memes: With their independent meme page that is not affiliated with the American Girl brand itself, Adair and Leigh have packed nostalgia through working with partners including La Croix, Anastasia Beverly Hills and Poppi. A standout collaboration was with emergency contraception brand Julie, which featured dolls holding the box with captions about failing to remember to take birth control on time and indulging in a morning after pill over a breakfast burrito. The key to successful brand collabs: Adair and Leigh said they discovered that when consumers are given messages that are “playful, creative and curated to their interest,” they are much more open to being advertised to than the duo predicted: “Being somewhat palatable to every possible brand will hold you back from being the best creative partner for the right brand, and creating work that you can actually be proud of." —Emmy Liederman Anitta Singer Multilingual musician: It’s encouraging to see that raw talent and ambition can still get you somewhere in the music business. Born in a working-class neighborhood outside Rio, Anitta (given name Larissa de Macedo Machado) was raised by a single mom. Determined to become a singer after listening to Mariah Carey, Anitta not only infused “favela funk” with pop elements to get radio play, she also learned four languages in her quest for fans outside Brazil. Warner Music Latina signed Anitta in 2020, and her trilingual album Versions of Me broke her in the U.S. and also got her a Grammy nomination. And the brands came running: A global crossover phenom like Anitta (her hit “Envolver” has 536 million views on YouTube) offers brands a golden opportunity to tap new markets—and boy, do they know it. Burger King, Pepsi, Target, Cheetos, Samsung and Tiffany & Co. are but a few of the major names that have inked deals with the singer. Business can be funky, too: While she already has a global pop career to manage, last year Anitta got together with educational company Estácio to produce an online course called “Anitta Prepara,” designed to encourage entrepreneurship in young people. —Robert Klara Cori Amato Hartwig Creator Using dark humor: Amato Hartwig, a writer, musician and mental health advocate, has not sold more than a “God Save the Meme Queen” sticker to monetize an Instagram page with nearly 240,000 followers. Since creating the account in 2017 as a source of personal creativity and catharsis, @manicpixiememequeen has become a dark humor content hub—an alternative to the typical trite well-wishes for those working through trauma or turmoil. Her Instagram, which covers topics like people-pleasing, processing difficult emotions and establishing personal power, include posts like “sorry i haven’t been making content i have been depressed not in a lana del ray vinyl way but in a very uninspired manner” and “men spend their whole lives trying to articulate feelings that have already been described by teen girls” over a fresh-faced Taylor Swift in a cowboy hat. Dismissing curated content: Amato Hartwig, who is proud to reject social media that she said promotes isolation instead of denouncing it, said creatives should not be afraid to claim new spaces instead of making their work “palatable for somebody else.” Mental health advocate: “Naturally, I’m a chronically neurotic, anxious and depressive individual, and I make content about that,” said Amato Hartwig, who stressed that this honesty foils the competitive and manufactured culture that social media facilitates. “I’m proud to be an advocate for mental health and to cultivate an online space that makes people feel connected and understood.” —Emmy Liederman Stephanie Hsu Actor An unexpected path: When a classmate told Hsu in high school that she should consider pursuing acting in college, “I had no idea that was even a path that a person could choose," said Hsu, who received a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination this year for Everything Everywhere All At Once. "I ended up going to NYU Tisch School of the Arts, studying at the Atlantic Theater Company and Experimental Theater Wing. Along the way, I worked at Pinkberry, cafes, bars [and] a woodshop, and side hustled by reselling secondhand clothing.” Year of change: “Everything Everywhere All at Once premiered at SXSW March of 2022 and one year later, the week after [the movie won Best Picture at] the Oscars, I headed back to SXSW to premiere my next movie, Joy Ride. I feel so grateful to have had a one-year anniversary in Austin, to really feel how much change has happened not only in my life in one year, but in the industry as a whole for the AAPI community," said Hsu, who also appeared this year in Poker Face and American Born Chinese. Advice for aspiring creatives: “Think ‘go deeper,’ not ‘climb higher.’” —Kathryn Lundstrom Ice Spice Rapper Viral fame: TikTok was first struck by Ice Spice’s work when her song “Munch” went viral last summer, but the rapper refused to succumb to the temporary popularity that the short-form content space can facilitate. After grabbing user attention with lyrics like “You thought I was feelin’ you? Nah” and “Bitch, I’m a baddie. I get what I want,” the masses refused to move on. Selling self-assurance: During an interview with media company Genius, Ice Spice engineered another popularity boost by poking fun at theories that she would fall from relevance. The short clip, in which the artist says, “Oh, she a one-hit wonder … what now, two-hit wonder?”catapulted a slew of user-generated content on TikTok. Fans found ways to adapt her mantra to their personal lives, using the sound bite as a background track for situations from “When you get played twice in a row” to “Me because I’m graduating high school a year early at age 16 and I got accepted into Columbia University.” Good "Karma": Through an antagonistically charming persona, coupled with an unapologetic sound that other artists admire, Ice Spice has leaned into social media-driven community and humor to cement her status on the top charts. She produced her single “Princess Diana” alongside Nicki Minaj earlier this year and worked with Taylor Swift on a remix of her song “Karma,” which the duo debuted during Swift’s highly anticipated Eras Tour. —Emmy Liederman Michael B. Jordan Actor, director, producer Guarding Rocky’s legacy: Not long ago, few may have guessed that Michael B. Jordan would become the creative force he is now. After making his directorial debut with Creed III—the highest-grossing Creed film yet—he has cemented himself as the man to take the Rocky legacy into a post-Sylvester Stallone future. Next up: a remake of The Thomas Crown Affair and an adaptation of Tom Clancy’s novel Rainbow Six. Plus, this summer he will serve as an instructor alongside Harvard professor Michael Sandel on its new virtual learning platform Varsity, offering the course “Tech Ethics: Critical Thinking in the Age of Apps, Algorithms and AI.” A growing advertising force: In 2021, Jordan appeared as Amazon Alexa’s human form in a Super Bowl ad. He has since also starred in campaigns for Gatorade’s Propel, Calvin Klein, Chase Sapphire Reserve and alongside his Creed co-star Tessa Thompson in a PSA against cybercrime. "Positive disruption": When asked what impact he hopes to leave on the industry, Jordan told Variety, “A positive disruption of old things. A fresh set of eyes is something that I’ve learned can be very helpful when you have tunnel vision.”—Stephen Lepitak Wisdom Kaye Model, creator Model behavior: With no more than his innate sense of style and inimitable ability to strike countless poses, Kaye used Instagram and TikTok (2.4 million and 9.3 million followers, respectively) to turn himself into a fashion icon while still in his teens. That’s success aplenty by adolescent standards, but it was also enough to get him noticed by international modeling powerhouse IMG, which signed him in 2021 and helped land him shoots for Balmain, Fendi, Ralph Lauren, Dior and other huge names. The importance of not giving a damn: For Kaye, now 22, the key to unlocking his creativity was turning his back on the popular crowd instead of trying to join it. In high school, “I used to get bullied a lot for my physical features, so I thought the best way to minimize this would be through conformity," he told Vogue. "As the years went by, I stopped caring what everyone thought about me and I started experimenting more.” Getting noticed in a sea of content: “What helped me get to where I am now is just always trying to do something different,” he told fashion magazine V. “If you want to do a trend, try remixing it and bring something new to it.” —Robert Klara Kristen Kish Chef Foodie famous: Kish rose to fame in 2012 as one of Top Chef's few female winners. Since then, she has become a regular on food and travel TV, co-hosting 36 Hours on the Travel Channel, Fast Foodies on TruTV and Iron Chef: Quest for an Iron Legend on Netflix, and opened her own restaurant, Arlo Grey, in Austin. It's the end of the world as she knows it: After several co-hosting gigs, Kish took center stage last March with her National Geographic series, Restaurants at the End of the World. Open to new perspectives: Travel media is a natural fit for Kish, whose experience as an adoptee from South Korea makes her particularly open to other walks of life, she said. “There is not a day that goes by that I don’t think about the fact that I was chosen into a family, and I could have been chosen into any family,” Kish told the Daily Beast earlier this year. “So that idea of travel, I always carry that curiosity with me, because it’s like, well, this could have been my family, too.” —Catherine Perloff Little Simz Rapper Mercury rising: In 2022—seven years after the release of her debut album—London-based rapper Little Simz claimed the illustrious Mercury Prize for her 2021 album, Sometimes I Might Be Introvert. Born in 1994 to Nigerian parents, Little Simz grew up in North London and found her voice in a local youth club choir. As a teen, she started uploading music to SoundCloud and Bandcamp. By age 21, she had four mixtapes, five EPs and that first record—all on her own label, Age 101 Music. It wasn’t long before Jay-Z took notice, profiling her on his esteemed Life + Times blog, and the rest is history. An open *Book: Fresh from winning the 2022 Mercury Prize, Simz is currently touring North America. She also published a coffee table book—simply titled, The *Book—in collaboration with streetwear brand Seven Stores, which is billed as a combination of “visual memories and personal moments of her journey in life.” She’s also been focused on her acting side hustle with roles in Netflix’s Top Boy and 2021's Venom: Let There Be Carnage. Finding liberation in creativity: “Making music is such a liberating, freeing experience for me. When I’m in the studio, I feel as free as I can possibly be. I feel comfortable, I feel like I can make mistakes and not be judged,” Simz told Creative Minds. “I push myself and allow myself to tap into places that I haven’t gone before.” —Rebecca Stewart Dylan Mulvaney Actor, influencer Chronicling transition: When creator Mulvaney started chronicling her gender transition with the video diary “Days of Girlhood,” TikTok users stuck around. Through clips about the physical changes that accompany hormone replacement therapy to her new makeup routines, fans grew to appreciate the intimacy and candidness of Mulvaney’s content. She has garnered 10.7 million followers on TikTok, and while her popularity has long attracted the attention of big brands including Instacart and Nike, a small partnership with Bud Light exposed Mulvaney to a new audience. Silencing hate: The brand, which sent her personalized beer cans to celebrate “365 days of womanhood,” faced backlash for refusing to protect Mulvaney while she received widespread hate from its consumer base. In her highly anticipated video response, which started with “It’s day 9,610 of being a human,” Mulvaney stressed she wants to focus on the support she does have while sharing new glimpses of her personality that has “nothing to do with (her) identity.” Moving forward: The backlash around the Bud Light partnership has not seemed to slow down Mulvaney's career: She has since appeared on Chelsea Handler’s podcast, Dear Chelsea, and sat down with Judy Blume to promote the movie adaptation of Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. —Emmy Liederman Jenna Ortega Actor Facebook-fueled career: Despite the charge that social media platforms can have a pernicious effect on kids, using Facebook worked out well for Ortega, 20, whom Netflix viewers will recognize as Wednesday, the titular role in Tim Burton’s 2022 Addams Family spinoff. “Facebook helped me get my first agent,” Ortega told Latina magazine in 2016. “My mom posted a video of me doing a dramatic monologue. Three months later, I got my first audition.” The creative challenges of an old role: Between the 1964 TV series and multiple films, Wednesday Addams is a character already known to millions—as a child. For Ortega, making the penultimate goth girl’s surly lines work in an adolescent persona was difficult. “When someone is saying really dark, twisted things out of a place of pure honesty and innocence,” she told Deadline, "it’s a bit different when you get older and become a teenager because then you just sound like a bitch.” On effecting change: Aware of her influence (41 million followers on Instagram alone) Ortega—who also starred in the last two Scream movies—is an outspoken advocate for diversity inclusion, especially in Hollywood. “There is no excuse not to speak up,” she told the gender-equality advocate Michelle Penelope King. “It doesn’t matter if you have five followers or a million. It doesn’t matter your age [or] where you come from. Every voice is important.” —Robert Klara Aubrey Plaza Actor April grows up: Plaza may have gotten her start as TV’s favorite nihilistic, deadpan intern-turned-assistant in Parks and Recreation, but the last year has solidified her stardom as much more than April Ludgate. In 2022, she played award-winning roles in HBO’s The White Lotus and indie film Emily the Criminal, which she also produced. In April, Plaza fronted the national milk processor organization MilkPep’s “Wood Milk” campaign, poking fun at the burgeoning plant-based milk market. Fulfilling a family dream: “I feel very much like there’s some kind of ancestral, generational thing going on, just in my DNA,” Plaza told Vanity Fair in May. “There are a lot of people in my family that are just so creative. It makes me wanna cry. And I got lucky. I have the means to somehow do it. It feels like a weight, almost. Not a bad weight, but like it was meant to be or something. I make so many of them so proud, and it feels personal, because they all had a hand in raising me.” Guiding philosophy: “I’m just as insecure as anybody, and I’m probably way more shy than people think. But obviously the way I deal with that is, like, extreme behaviors,” she told Vanity Fair. “If all else fails, at least be authentic.” —Kathryn Lundstrom Oliver TwiXt Musical artist Breaking the mold: Openly gay rapper Lil Nas X may have paved the way, but queer hip-hop artist Oliver TwiXt has widened it. With his huge glasses, surprisingly silky singing voice and buoyant personality, TwiXt first turned heads at Atlanta’s A3C music festival in 2015. But it’s his LGBTQ+ reality-show appearances—Chasing: Atlanta, Chasing: LA and trans producer Ts Madison’s The Queens Supreme Court—that bought national exposure. Magnetic behavior: TwiXt is known for his stylistic flair and his “the Nerd” persona. (He’s a math geek with a degree from Morehouse College.) He’s parlayed both into merch for sale on his website—everything from socks to refrigerator magnets, all bearing his likeness. "Happy just as who I am": TwiXt has used his celebrity not just to raise awareness for his music, but also to promote positivity and acceptance within communities that often go without it. “I’m happy I’m Black. I’m happy I’m gay. I’m happy just as who I am,” he told the website Blaq Inhabited. “In my music, I try to put all those things in there. So that’s what I would want others to feel, just happy, free and liberated.” —Robert Klara Check out Adweek’s Creative 100 for 2023 by category: Agency Leaders | Rising Agency Talent | Branded Content Innovators | TV and Streaming Innovators | Media Innovators | Authors and Artists | Directors This story is part of Adweek’s Creativity x Culture digital features package, which spotlights the people, marketing strategies and creativity driving lasting cultural and societal change.

The Creative 100

Creative 100 2023: The Influencers and Celebrities Impacting Culture

These celebs and online creators are challenging norms

Barrett Adair and Carter Leigh

Adweek Staff

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