For decades, brand visibility at the US Open tennis championship meant courtside signage, broadcast ads, and athlete endorsement deals. That formula is being rewritten to consider when and how creators enter the pictures, according to John Hu, co-founder of Stan, an agency that works with 90,000 creator entrepreneurs and influencers across verticals.

Creators belong at the start, not the end

The old model treated creators as an amplification layer: Build the campaign, then hire influencers to post about it. Hu says that sequence is backwards.

"Creators aren't just being brought in at the end to amplify a campaign," he said. "The strongest activations are being built with them from the beginning."

The reasoning comes down to authenticity. "When you give someone an experience, access or a story that is inherently worth sharing, the content feels native to their audience rather than like an ad they were paid to post," said Hu. That vicarious experience from followers and superfans leads to viral engagement and time spent.

That distinction is what separates a sponsorship people scroll past from one they actively engage with. "That's where brands create meaningful engagement," Hu says, "when the sponsorship becomes something people want to participate in, talk about, and share."

Vertical video is the discovery engine

Asked whether social media or vertical formats like TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts drive more value around an event like the US Open, Hu rejects the premise. "I don't really separate social from vertical video," he says. "Vertical video is social."

That reframing matters for how brands plan media.

"TikTok, Reels, and Shorts have fundamentally changed how people discover culture," Hu says. "You don't necessarily go looking for US Open content anymore. The algorithm brings the most interesting moments from the US Open to you."

This tips the scales away from production budgets and toward speed and relevance.

"The content that wins [followers] isn't necessarily the most expensive piece of content," said Hu. "It's usually the content that earns attention the fastest."

He also cautions against single-platform thinking. "A great piece of content can start on TikTok, move to Reels, get reposted on X, turn into a conversation on LinkedIn, and ultimately drive someone somewhere the creator or brand owns," he says. "The goal shouldn't be to win one platform. It should be to create something worth distributing across all of them."

Outspend nobody, outinterest everybody

With so much brand noise surrounding a marquee event like the US Open, Hu's guidance for staying visible is counterintuitive to traditional media buying: "Don't try to outspend the noise. Try to be more interesting than it."

Given the sheer volume of activity competing for attention during the tournament, raw spend no longer guarantees cut-through. "There is an enormous amount of brand activity around an event like the US Open, which means simply spending more money doesn't guarantee attention," he says. "Brands need a very clear reason for why they belong in the conversation… I'd spend less time asking how many impressions you can buy and more time asking what you can create that people will voluntarily share."

Practically, that means rebalancing budget allocation. "Instead of putting everything behind one large activation, I'd leave room for creators, experimentation, and real-time moments," Hu says. "Culture moves quickly during a live event, and the brands that can react to what people are actually talking about have an advantage."

The real asset is distribution

"The most valuable thing a brand can build isn't one viral post. It's distribution," Hu says. Creator relationships and community trust developed during the US Open don't expire when the trophies are awarded, instead, they compound, giving brands a durable audience connection long after the final match is played.

For marketers evaluating US Open activations, Hu's framework serves up a clear takeaway: Treat creators as strategic partners from day one, plan for multi-platform distribution rather than single-channel winners, and invest in relationships that go the distance well beyond the final match point.

This was originally featured in the EMARKETER Daily newsletter. For more marketing insights, statistics, and trends, subscribe here.