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- Creator Clash reportedly exceeded 100,000 pay-per-view buys
- Art Basel Is Wooing Social Media Influencers
- Budweiser provides Twitch streamers with free tunes
- Huggies unwraps UGC influencer campaign in Vietnam for new diapers
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Great Reads
Fanhouse was built by creators, for creators (and they mean it
“I am a creator at heart and I always will be, and just because I’m also a founder now doesn’t mean I’m not a creator,” Nguyen said. She sees these two sides of her persona as complementary, rather than at odds with one another, or — god forbid — unprofessional. “It’s a positive thing that really goes hand in hand, and I think a good investor will see that.”
As it turns out, Nguyen was right. Fanhouse just secured a $20 million Series A round from Andreessen Horowitz, and the platform is about to surpass $10 million in creator payouts in less than two years. Its creators include The Chainsmokers (who are also pre-seed investors), Andrea Botez, Yoshi Sudarso and more.
It’s not unheard of for a YouTube star or TikTok sensation to be the face of a creator economy startup, but usually when this happens, it’s with extremely established, high-earning names looking for new business opportunities, like MrBeast with Creative Juice, or David Dobrik with Dispo. As a young, emerging creator, Nguyen understands what the “creator middle class” — people who make some money on social media, but aren’t rolling in it — needs right now to grow their businesses.
“I met Khoi [Le], my co-founder, on Twitter, and we became best friends,” Nguyen told TechCrunch. “I was telling him all these things like, OnlyFans sucks, I hate it, I want to get off of it but I need the money … Or like, Twitch takes 50% of subscriptions, it’s so exhausting.”
Glenn Ginsburg: Long-Term Influencer Marketing Campaigns For The Entertainment Industry
Recently, QYOU Media worked on the Resident Evil Village campaign by helping Resident Evil build a TikTok following for the first time.
After looking at parts of the game, they decided to focus on one of the characters in the new game, Lady D, who is a 12-foot-tall vampire that many fans were excited about.
“So our approach on TikTok was to really treat the Resident Evil franchise as if it were a creator, so we built a channel for TikTok, started from zero [and] brought it up over just a short time to over half a million subscribers.”
Glenn shares that they created multiple creative campaigns with influencers to spread the word about the game. This effort led to over 40 to 50 million organic views.
What they didn’t expect was to hear back from so many fans of the game. Many Resident Evil fans reached out to them about creating content for QYOU and Resident Evil. Many were cosplayers.
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Campaign Insights
Huggies unwraps UGC influencer campaign in Vietnam for new diapers
Kimberly-Clark, Huggies' parent firm, has launched a user-generated content campaign in Vietnam to promote Huggies Thin & Soft and introduce the public to the new characteristics of its diapers. Done in collaboration with GroupM's INCA, the team selected 200 nano and micro-influencers, who had a dominant share of voice and strong influence on more than 20 mom communities. This was done to incite conversations endorsing the value of its thin and soft attributed diapers. The influencers then reviewed ""the thinnest best-selling diaper brands from Korea"" before privately sharing Huggies sale links with other mothers in the communities.
The campaign revolved around the fact that mothers turned to other mothers within their communities for advice and product recommendations. INCA further added that urban Vietnamese mothers place a high value on imported goods, and are excited by innovations hailing from Japan and Korea. As such, Huggies capitalised on these characteristics and turned its focus towards mom communities, whose ""small but powerful word-of-mouth influence could collectively spark powerful conversations,"" the brand explained.
The user-generated content campaign reached 650,000 moms with a conversion rate of 2.45%, leading to a click-through rate of 77%, including over 28,000 individual discussions and reviews of the diaper product, INCA said. Based on the the Younet Social Listening Report, Huggies held the largest share of voice in the market, and was the most-talked about in terms of its quality, absorbency, and thinnest attributes. The brand said in a press statement that with 1,313 comments and 1,016 total link clicks, the total number of comments with links was high.
Budweiser provides Twitch streamers with free tunes
Budweiser launched a Royalty Free Bot to help provide Twitch streamers with free music to use in their videos, according to information emailed to Marketing Dive.
The bot, which will be hosted on Discord, will provide access to music from up-and-coming artists that can be used for free, addressing one of the challenges on Twitch, which blocks streamers when they don’t own the rights to the music they use. The bot was created in partnership with agency David Bogotá and will be promoted by a number of popular streamers such as WestCol, Leandro, MrStiven, Natalan and Coscu.
The activation by the Anheuser-Busch InBev brand comes two years after the launch of record label BudxRecords, which is dedicated to identifying upcoming talent, and represents its latest attempt to connect with consumers around culture.
Art Basel Is Wooing Social Media Influencers to Its Hong Kong Show
“Social media has become part of the broader media landscape over the last decade, and we are aware that is an important platform for our galleries and artists,” an Art Basel spokesperson told Artnet News via email, adding that the processes are aligned across all the shows run by the Swiss fair organizer. “As we have seen an increase in interest and accreditation requests from influencers over the past year, we started integrating influencers into our existing media accreditation process, reviewing them on a case-by-case basis.”
Art Basel also confirmed the existence of “simple guidelines,” which were created to “assist influencers in familiarizing themselves with the Art Basel show and onsite filming requirements to ensure a smooth fair experience for all participants.”
According to communication seen by Artnet News, the Influencers cleared to attend Art Basel in Hong Kong, running from May 25 to 29, have been asked to follow rules that include some media standard practices, such as properly crediting the galleries and the artists that appear in their posts. The guidelines also offered tips on where to find the necessary information: “Simply look at the signs posted at the top corner of each booth for gallery names and the wall texts next to each work for artist names.”
The fair is also asking influencers to tag @artbasel on their social media posts as well as to add a series of show hashtags in English, as well as in traditional and simplified Chinese. Photo-taking influencers are also told to be mindful of the privacy of fairgoers, and to avoid filming others without their permission. Influencers are not allowed to live stream from the fair floor.
Sport Ireland pays €80k for 'influencers' to help promote campaigns
The body with responsibility for promoting the development of sport in Ireland has spent more than €80,000 on employing "influencers" since 2019.
Sport Ireland said that social media and celebrity influencers, including some former and active sports figures, have been used on 27 occasions to further their campaigns, ranging in scope from keeping people healthy to advocating a return to sport post-Covid-19.
Former rugby stars John Hayes and Tommy Bowe were paid €5,000 and €7,500 respectively to advocate for separate Sport Ireland awareness campaigns in 2020 and 2021, with both making media appearances and posting to social media as part of the deal.
Former 2FM DJ Eoghan McDermott was paid €4,000 in 2020 to promote the European Week of Sport, which included a commitment to several media interviews and four social media posts.
The information was revealed by Sport Ireland in response to a parliamentary question from Social Democrats TD Catherine Murphy.
Other influencers and celebrities include Virgin Media presenter and actor Simon Delaney, who was paid €6,500 for “influencer activity”, activist and journalist Joanne O’Riordan (€1,100), and influencer Ailbhe Garrihy, sister of RTÉ DJ Doireann, who was paid €8,000 for social media posts relating to Sport Ireland’s Keep Well campaign in 2021.
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Interesting People
A year ago, she was a Bay Street lawyer. Now, Jules is a ‘famous’ TikTok influencer
Since Romano began posting videos on her TikTok account, @julesthelawyer, in 2020 — mainly to add some life and laughter back into her days during the COVID-19 pandemic — she’s amassed more than 100,000 followers and 5.6 million likes.
“I thought I was making it big being like a first-year associate on Bay Street,” Romano said.
But, unlike some influencers, she didn’t start posting regularly to make money. She wanted to be famous.
“Like, that’s what I wanted — to be famous on TikTok,” Romano told the Star in an interview this week.
She’s famous enough, considering her following and likes are nearly double the population of Toronto, or 106 times the capacity of the Rogers Centre, where her brother takes the mound.
It’s become her signature on the platform — being a “famous person” — with comedic videos that often start with, “Welcome to a day in my life as a famous person living in downtown Toronto,” or, “Hey TikTok, come spend a date night with a Toronto celebrity.”
‘New York Nico’ Instagram creator signs with Hollywood agency
United Talent Agency has signed filmmaker Nicolas Heller, who scours the five boroughs in search of offbeat NYC characters to profile on his popular Instagram feed.
Heller’s account has 895,000 followers and most recently featured a guest appearance by Post Malone.
A new short film by Heller, “Out of Order,” will make its world premiere at the 2022 Tribeca Film Festival next month.
A true New York tale, the fest describes the film’s plot as: “On his way to a big date, an affable 30-year-old man’s digestive system turns on him as he races to find an ever-elusive bathroom on the streets of New York City.”
Before the screening, there will also be a talent show featuring New York Nico regulars.
Heller previously collaborated with the MTA to get celebs — including Jerry Seinfeld, Whoopi Goldberg and Ilana Glazer — to voice subway announcements to bring riders back to mass transit amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
UTA will now aim to expand Heller’s work “across TV, film and digital platforms,” we hear.
Maya Astrologo: Achieving Profitable Collaborations Within The Montreal Food Scene
Since founding the mtl.foodie Instagram account back in 2017, Maya Astrologo has been analyzing and documenting the various changes occurring in the Montreal food scene. With over 500 posts and nearly 30,000 followers, this food account has grown from strength to strength. Although she is still a student at the University of Montreal, Astrologo still makes time to find delicious content for her Instagram account. She goes into more detail about why she decided to build the mtl.foodie account.
‘It was my first year in Cegup and we’re downtown so there were so many restaurants everywhere. Almost every break, I was just trying a different place and I would take pictures and post it on my private account. Basically, people just started suggesting that I make a food page so it is easier for someone to just go back and see where you went to eat.’
Astrologo also goes on to explain her excitement and shock when she began to notice a large following developing on her platform.
‘I just created a food blog on a whim and I initially started it just to post where I went just so someone has an idea of where to go back to. Then, it really started to pick up, I would say maybe after a year. I just started gaining followers and getting invited to certain restaurants. There was no intention of getting this big at all.’
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Industry News
YouTube Shorts gains a TikTok-like ‘Green Screen’ feature
YouTube is expanding on its latest feature that made any public YouTube video potential fodder for its TikTok competitor, YouTube Shorts. Today, the company is announcing the launch of “Green Screen,” a tool that will allow users to use up to a 60-second video segment from any eligible YouTube video or YouTube Shorts as the background for their new original Shorts video.
The feature joins a number of other effects available now to YouTube Shorts creators, including the appearance-smoothing Retouch feature; a Lighting feature to boost dark environments; an Align feature that aligns the subject from the last frame of a video with a new video; a text and timeline editor to add messages over top videos; various video filters; and, most recently, Cut — the tool that effectively made all of YouTube’s public content possible Shorts material.
As with Cut, YouTube says the new Green Screen remix feature can be used with any public YouTube video unless the creator has opted out. The only exception to this involves music videos which include copyrighted content from YouTube’s partners or others with visual claims. Also similar to Cut, any video created with Green Screen includes a link back to the original content creator for attribution’s sake.
Vanessa Guthrie Exiting as Snap Head of Originals, Anjuli Millan
After nearly six years at Snap, head of originals Vanessa Guthrie is leaving the company.
Guthrie will depart Snap at the end of June 2022. At that point, Anjuli Millan, head of production for Snap Originals for the past three years, will step into the role as head of original content.
“During her time with us, Vanessa has been a trailblazer for women in tech and has played an integral role in launching content for the mobile-first generation,” Snap said in a statement. “While we will miss her tremendously, we’re excited to see what she tackles next.”
Guthrie (pictured above) was elevated to head of Snap Originals in June with the departure of previous originals boss Sean Mills. According to Snap, Guthrie helped build the group responsible for Snapchat original programming from the ground up. Under her leadership, Snap premiered more than 150 originals, including global expansion into the U.K., India, and Canada. Guthrie also championed diversity, equity and inclusion: Over the past two years, more than 50% of the leads or hosts in Snap Originals have identified as BIPOC or LGBTQIA+.
Creator Clash reportedly exceeded 100,000 pay-per-view buys
Creator Clash, the influencer boxing event started by iDubbbz, has been a success by almost every definition. The event sold out the Yuengling Center in Tampa, with 10,000 spectators showing up for the night of fights.
Now, it appears that success extended to the online viewership of the event as well, as Tubefilter’s Donagh Corby reported that more than 100,000 purchased the event via pay-per-view. The PPV, which viewers could pay to watch on Moment House, started at $19.99. With that price and the reported number of buys means that the event grossed at leastaround $2 million.
While Creator Clash still hasn’t announced just how much of that money will end up going to the event’s many charities, it seems likely it will add up to an impressive donation. What’s more, the number of PPV buys for Creator Clash appears to have easily outpaced the card in late December featuring Jake Paul and Tyron Woodley, which reportedly had 65,000 PPV buys.
Apple Makes It Easier for Podcasters to Grow Subscriptions
On Monday, Apple announced Apple Podcast Delegated Delivery, a new service meant to alleviate work for podcast publishers and creators around growing subscribers to their premium audio.
Delegated Delivery lets publishers and creators upload, manage and distribute their premium audio content through third-party hosting providers that support the new feature, such as Acast or Buzzsprout. Previously, podcast creators and publishers had to upload subscriber-only podcasts through Apple Podcasts Connect.
The platform also said creators can use the dashboard of third-party hosts to publish free and premium audio content. Creators will also be able to schedule exclusive content, early access and ad-free content, according to Apple.
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Great Paywalled Content
Jellysmack Doubles Down on Food Videos and Signs YouTuber Zach Choi - Business Insider
If Jellysmack has its way, Zach Choi will be soon be eating his way across millions more Facebook and Snapchat screens beyond his flagship YouTube hub.
Choi, who counts 14 million subscribers, is the largest YouTube creator that Jellysmack has signed thus far in the food category, its most popular vertical. Food – which generated 20 billion views last year, Jellysmack said – is followed by "craft and DIY," automotive, beauty, and true crime videos.
The company harnesses its technology to identify YouTube creators with cross-platform potential, like Choi, and then repurposes their content for distribution on Facebook and Snapchat, pocketing a cut of the ensuing ad revenues.
For his part, Choi has rocketed to fame by fusing two enormously popular YouTube subcultures: ASMR and eating.
In layman's terms, that means he consumes gluttonous, deep-fried concoctions – like mozzarella corn dogs dusted in Hot Cheeto crumbs, washed down with his signature Sprite – in minimally captioned videos that contain no talking. The only sounds in Choi's videos are the busy drone of his food preparation – which he conducts wearing black plastic safety gloves – and the satisfied slurping and chomping noises as he eats.
Choi has 625,000 followers on his Facebook page, and started working with Jellysmack late last month. There, his YouTube videos, which are typically 15 minutes long, have been edited to around four minutes, with music and instructive captions added to certain posts.
"Online creators have tapped into food in every way imaginable," said Cat Valdes, a former YouTuber who now serves as Jellysmack's senior director of creator partnerships. "We are their growth partner on the journey to becoming a global food icon."
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