Variety's 'Strictly Business' podcast features conversations with industry leaders about the business of media and entertainment
On today’s episode of Variety‘s “Strictly Business” podcast, Matt Sandler and Angie More of Amazon explain how the digital behemoth is diving in to the creator economy to build business and bring scale in ad buying to big brands.
Sandler, who is Amazon’s general manager of creator services, and More, head of creator ad partnerships, explain how they’re trying to leverage all that Amazon has to offer to support the new breed of digital stars. The company’s prime target are the born entrepreneurs who are launching products and businesses that are rooted in their success with social media-distributed content and the strength of their fan communities.
“Over the last year, we’ve seen creators and the conversation around creators and media change dramatically. Creators used to be thought of in kind of more digital endemic terms. People who came up on YouTube or Twitch, and we saw that they started to shape culture. They started to shape how media was consumed. They started to shape how customers bought new things or selected products,” Sandler observes. “And so we took a look at creators more so as entrepreneurs. They are the center of gravity for their businesses, and most of those businesses are rooted in some form of content that could be a YouTube channel, that could be a Twitch livestream series, that could be a podcast, that could be a social series. But these entrepreneurs are rooted in content, and then they have extensions that expand well beyond the content and kind of the walls of any single platform.”
The pair point to the burgeoning cottage industry around the Jason and Travis Kelce podcast “New Heights.” That show is the hub of a wheel that includes the Amazon-built e-commerce storefront Kelce Clubhouse, which sells a range of fan and lifestyle merch, not all of which is directly related to the sibling NFL players. The multifaceted Keke Palmer has also teamed with Amazon Creator Services for her “Baby, this is Keke Palmer” podcast that has led to other pacts in the Amazon-verse including Palmer’s plan to go live on Twitch twice a month.
The array of options that creators pursue is part of the sizzle of the sector and something that greatly appeals to brands. Sandler and More’s work is to make it more adaptable and, yes, scalable for marketers.
“What a lot of our advertisers are looking to us of like, how do you close the full loop of that customer journey throughout leveraging [Amazon’s] incredible creator suite and the connective tissue between a creator and their fan community,” More says. “We’re really working with brands and creators and tech and we’re really focused on telling that story and helping really shape where this industry goes from a measurement and impact perspective.”