Jake Shane is going from TikTok comedian to candy executive. After spending the last five years building his online following, the Forbes Top Creator and Under 30 alumnus has parlayed his 5.5 million-fan base into a podcast, sold out live tours, acted on shows like HBO’s Hacks, and is planning his Broadway debut. Now, he’s adding a C-suite position to his resume. This week, Shane was named chief creative officer at German candy company Katjes as it expands its $1 billion (revenue) gummy business through the U.S. market.

“Being able to help cultivate this brand in the States, which has done so well in Europe, is kind of a dream of mine,” Shane told Forbes. “We share the same sentiment that candy is for everyone. So at the end of the day, I'm just happy to create this message.”

While most companies employ marketing experts to run a creator strategy and hawk their product, Katjes is going straight to the source: “Jake has so much cultural relevance. He's able to translate whatever story a brand wants to tell with its product to his audience, and convert it,” says Lejla Granov-Plavulj, the brand’s head of U.S. marketing. “Jake's community and our target consumer, they just align so well.”

The partnership started when Shane’s friend and fellow content creator Brett Chody introduced him to Katjes products—think chewy rainbow gummies and sour unicorns—three years ago. An instant fan, he started organically posting content about their gummies online and mentioned their products in The Strategist’s list of “What Jake Shane Can’t Live Without” last September. By November, he was on a call with the Katjes marketing team who’d caught wind of his fandom.

“I was a consumer for so long so when I heard that they were wanting to expand, I was like, ‘I will do anything to speak to them,’” Shane says.

He isn’t the first content creator to be tapped by a brand to sell to this next generation of shoppers. YouTuber Emma Chamberlain was briefly the chief creative officer at skincare company Bad Habit before it shuttered in 2023; and she was a guest designer for two Warby Parker glasses collections in 2023 and 2024. And Alix Earle is an investor and partner at SipMargs, where she’s heavily involved in creative direction and campaigns. Shane, too, was excited to step into a more entrepreneurial and long-term role. He will be paid for the partnership—in cash, not equity—but he's unable to share specific terms of the deal.

As the CCO, he’ll be responsible for the creative strategy, brand messaging and marketing campaigns across the U.S. Unsurprisingly, he’ll lean heavily on TikTok and other video campaigns—like new comedy series, taste tests and integrating the products into his podcast. And he says humor will be a cornerstone to the brand voice he develops.

Katjes plans to let the creator create. “As a brand, you come from a more classic approach of communicating to a consumer,” says Granov-Plavulj. “He is the perfect way to bring individual and unexpected ideas that will actually be a lot cooler in converting our target group.”