Month: July 2022

Since #Creators4BIPOC began in 2020, the program has worked with more than 100 creators as part of Logitech’s efforts to address inequality with a $1 million commitment to be spent over a decade. To avoid it being just a top-down approach, Logitech created a new “Change Council” last week that will advise the company on issues about diversity, equity and inclusions. The inaugural council consists of five diverse creators including ARUUU, a Turkish American Muslim gaming and anime creator; the Latinx and trans gaming creator Veronica “Nikatine” Ripley; and Snowlit, a Chinese American gamer and streamer.

According to Erin Chin, chief marketing officer of Logitech For Creators — a division of the company focused on working with influencers — the goal is to make sure the efforts aren’t just “a brand-driven thing” by partnering directly with creators. Because a lack of diversity, equity and inclusion has been a long-term problem, Chin said it’ll take a long-term commitment to correct it.

“Being sustained is the number one thing,” she said. “You can’t do one thing one time and expect that to make a change. It took hundreds of years to get to the situation we’re in right now and it’s going to take a long time and a lot of effort to get out of the situation.”

Along with raising funds for various nonprofits through Twitch streams and other efforts, Logitech has brought in experts to educate creators on things such as how to copyright their work. Last year, the company partnered with choreographer JaQuel Knight — known for working with Beyoncé on dances for hit songs like “Single Ladies” and “Formation” — to help 50 BIPOC TikTok creators secure copyrights for their choreography, an issue that has come up on the platform as BIPOC creators have made dances popular without getting proper credit.

Logitech declined to say how much it pays creators it partners with, including non-white creators.

Brands, agencies and platforms are increasingly making massive investments to fund diverse creators. In June, YouTube began accepting applications for its 2023 program for diverse creators as part of its $100 million Black Voices Fund. Last month, Snap Inc. announced a new accelerator program that includes giving 25 Black creators $120,000 each, and Havas Media Group announced a new partnership with the creator platform Spotter, which has committed more than $125 million to diverse creators since 2015. Other investments from other major platforms like Meta, which since 2020 has committed tens of millions of dollars in partnerships for Black creators.

Companies need to put time into finding the right creators rather than just investing money, said Aundre Larrow, a Brooklyn-based visual artist who is one of the five members of Logitech’s new Change Council. That often takes time, both in terms of research upfront and also having longer-term deals to make more than a momentary impact.

“Often folks are like ‘I have $10,000, I need to get it to some BIPOC folks so here are the first people I find on Google,’” Larrow said. “It’s the same concept of someone running for (political) office and they’ve never met a Black person before so they pop up to a church in Harlem.”

Despite all the major financial commitments, there are still major pay gaps among influencers. A 2021 survey of 400 influencers found that Black influencers are paid 35% less than white influencers. The survey — conducted by The Influencer League, an influencer platform for diverse creators, and the public relations firm MSL — also found that compensation differences were largest with people who had under 50,000 followers, but there were also differences with those with larger followings.

Despite many brands wanting to partner with diverse creators that authentically address important issues, 59% of Black influencers surveyed by MSL felt they were negatively impacted financially when they spoke about race issues on their platforms compared to just 14% of white influencers.

Educating about the business side of content creation is especially helpful for BIPOC influencers with smaller audiences, said D’Anthony Jackson, associate director of digital and influencer marketing at MSL.

“Agents actually know how to navigate these waters so they know what they should be charging and allow them to negotiate more money,” Jackson said. “But without that education, you don’t know and you’re out swimming and don’t know where to go.”

To target creative types as well as social media influencers and creators the company is spending most of its ad budget — roughly 70-80%, per Levin — on social platforms like TikTok and Instagram where that audience is spending their time. Aside from social platforms, Willa is also working with influencers and is advertising on Hulu and YouTube with digital video spots. The spots were made by its in-house studio, which has grown to have 10 employees over the last year.

It’s unclear how much exactly Willa is spending on advertising as Levin declined to share ad budget figures. Kantar also did not have spending data for Willa available. (Kantar doesn’t track social media spending and the majority of Willa’s spending is on social media.) Pathmatics did not have ad spend data available for the company either. Levin did note that Willa just started to use paid advertising over the last year.

Willa currently has over 10,000 freelancers with open accounts, according to Levin, who added that as freelancing becomes more common — during the pandemic many people began freelancing and continue to do so — that makes the company’s offering have broader appeal. 

“Freelance work is estimated to overtake traditional employment,” said Levin. “It’s estimated that by 2027 it’ll be more common to be a freelancer than a traditional employee. In the market, we’re seeing an acceleration toward that trajectory of the future of work. More people are leaving their jobs to become freelancers so there’s a stronger demand for our service.”

Even so, the company isn’t looking to take a broad approach to its advertising now.

Instead, the company is focusing on its “niche audience” of creators and creative freelancers and using its ad dollars to have its ads show up with a “high frequency” for that audience. Willa is doing so to “create some familiarity and trust, reinforce [who we are] to that audience.”

That approach makes sense to Craig Stout, executive creative director, senior partner at growth strategy consulting firm Prophet. “You have to meet people where they’re at,” said Stout of Willa’s focus on social platforms like Instagram and TikTok. “That’s where creators are spending their time. You have to get your message out there where people are hanging out.”

Stout also noted that as a former freelancer he can see the appeal in a platform like Willa as there’s an “unmet need as a vertical for creators getting paid in the freelance market” and that creatives often don’t think in terms of billing. That said, Stout noted that creatives have a “very high bar for the use of humor and design” and that Willa’s current creative effort may not meet that bar.

“Inven management said that the company will be making a pivot to focus more on marketing in the gaming space,” said Tom Matthiesen, a former Inven Global journalist. “But I have no idea what [that] will look like. That’s up to them.”

The layoffs at Inven Global, the long-running English-language division of a Korean gaming site, were only the latest in a deluge of similar moves that have rocked the gaming and esports media industry in recent months.

In March, endemic news site Upcomer laid off the majority of its editorial staff in favor of a pivot to video content. Last week, Game Informer laid off two staffers amid a broader round of firings at the publication’s parent company GameStop. On July 11, the Dallas Morning News decided to sunset its dedicated esports coverage, moving its esports writer to another role. Meanwhile, other publications including Dexerto have instituted budget cuts or hiring freezes in an effort to avoid joining the chorus of layoffs. 

“Our entire industry is dying,” said Rod “Slasher” Breslau, a longtime esports journalist who helped launch editorial operations such as ESPN Esports and theScore Esports. “Every media outlet is dying; the entire world of journalism is continuing to change.”

Indeed, the issues plaguing esports media are, to some extent, a microcosm of the broader profitability challenges facing the media industry in 2022. The majority of endemic esports publications are supported by venture capitalists, who anticipated that the demand for esports journalism would match pace with the growth of the esports industry at large. With a recession on the horizon, cash-strapped journalism operations are a prime target for cost-cutting. 

“In general, VC sites are kind of just tapped out at the moment,” said one Inven Global staffer who requested anonymity due to fears of reprisal from their employer. “I think we’re just going to return to how it was before, where esports is sort of a passion project, side work for a smaller site. But for a while, it’s not going to be what we’ve seen before, where it’s a nine-to-five job.”

Another industry-wide challenge that has hit esports journalism particularly hard is declining traffic following a core update to Google’s algorithm in May 2022. Following the update, readership of esports publications has suffered across the board, some observers have noted.

“Whatever’s happened, this Google change has impacted websites in general — but I know for a fact it’s impacted esports publications,” said Dom Sacco, an esports consultant and founder of the news site Esports News UK. “I know that some bigger publications have seen fewer impressions and less traffic, as Esports News UK has.”

Dexerto, one of the few endemic esports journalism companies to consistently turn a profit, has managed to do so by capitalizing on the credibility gained through its editorial vertical to build out more efficient revenue streams, such as a brand consultancy. Brand consulting is also one of Inven’s significant revenue streams, and the company’s pivot to marketing could be an indication that it is leaning into that side of the business. Digiday contacted Inven Global for comment, but did not receive a reply prior to the publication of this article.

“That’s generally been Inven’s moneymaker for the past five years,” said the former staffer. “Inven’s position, in terms of making money, was promoting eastern companies that are very popular in South Korea and Southeast Asia. If they wanted to expand into the western market, Inven provided consultation for that, because they have a western presence and are still very familiar with the eastern games market.”

Publications’ continued expansion into non-editorial revenue streams is evidence of one of esports media’s most uncomfortable truths: At the moment, there just isn’t much of an audience for thorough, well-sourced esports journalism. In a community increasingly dominated by prominent individual influencers, esports fans tend to care about who shares the story first and loudest — not most accurately.

“Media literacy is at an all-time low, in my opinion,” said another anonymous former Inven Global staffer. “People are getting their news from social media, and they don’t particularly care where that information is coming from.”

Several of the sources interviewed for this article pointed to the dissolving barrier between esports journalism and influencer-powered commentary, including Jake Lucky’s work at Full Squad Gaming, as further evidence of the relatively short attention span of esports’ younger audience. Even as more traditional publications like Inven Global bite the dust, Full Squad’s numbers have skyrocketed — and much of the esports audience is unable, or simply doesn’t care, to parse the difference between the two types of content.

“They are not journalists; they do not go the extra mile to talk to the subjects involved, or to talk to the people around the subject. They do not put any additional information out there that you wouldn’t know by reading the Reddit thread initially,” said Breslau, who developed a reputation as a “No. 1 esports consultant and leakboy” for posting his own reporting on Twitter over the years. “They’re not providing any service to the people who are reading, to actually be able to look into stuff. And they are not trying to get themselves involved in things that would be controversial or make them look bad — and that shouldn’t fucking matter at all.”

Inven Global wasn’t the first endemic esports publication to experience layoffs in 2022, and it is unlikely to be the last. As companies across the industry hunker down in anticipation of the recession, esports journalism — which has always been more of a product of passion than profits — is taking a big step backward. Until the esports community matures or expands enough to create a sizable audience for in-depth journalism, the situation won’t improve any time soon.

“If the future journalists of today are looking at Jake and Keemstar as their idols, and not other people like Richard Lewis or Jacob Wolf, then I think we might be in a spot of bother,” Sacco said. “It’d be interesting to know what journalism courses will look like in 10-20 years’ time.”

Beekman 1802 reexamines its annual budget every quarter, said Josh Kilmer-Purcellwould, the company’s co-founder. “Early in the year, we noticed that we had budgeted a little bit more for the top of the funnel, but by the end of Q1, we realized that was not working as well as we hoped,” Kilmer-Purcellwould said, adding that those results indicated the company should shift from pre-recorded videos to live educational video streams.

With the goal of increasing performance marketing efforts as well as boosting brand awareness, the brand shifted its focus from TV retail such as QVC and HSN to growing its e-commerce channel. The company has always kept a close on performance: during the pandemic, the company depended on TikTok for a better understanding of how consumers are interacting with self-care content, which informed campaigns.

Kilmer-Purcellwould continued, “One of our main goals is to connect directly with customers how and where they want, so online video has been a big opportunity that is top of mind.”

Aside from digital video spots on YouTube, the brand also occasionally does live videos, both for shopping and for educational purposes, to reach more people. These segments have featured the founders and their products to showcase the company’s products. According to Kilmer-Purcellwould, 80% of all the video content they create is done in-house with its own team.

“What I love about Beekman 1802’s video strategy is that the founders themselves play an active role in producing content. Their marketing approach makes the consumer feel like they know the co-foundersJosh and Brent — like they are two best friends who are sharing their personal skincare tips to another friend over happy hour,” said Paige Raiczyk, social media strategist at a full-service, boutique creative agency, Berlin Cameron.

It is unclear how much of its advertising budget is allocated to advertising initiatives as Kilmer-Purcellwould not share overall budget specifics. According to Kantar, the company spent close to $85,000 so far for 2022 on marketing efforts. Kilmer-Purcellwould noted that the spend was on influencer marketing and digital ads across social media with most of the spend allocated to TikTok. Since last year, Beekman 1802 saw a growth of 700% in revenue with every campaign since 2021 such as the recent launch of their face scan tool. However, Kilmer-Purcellwould declined to share specifics on which campaign caused the spike in growth.

As for the company’s influencer marketing work, they feature beauty influencers, most recently Kat Steckler, a macro-influencer, and dermatologists like Dr. Derm to convey the brand’s ethos as a wellness brand.

“We weigh all of our influencers based on their own kindness,” said Kilmer-Purcellwould on how they select their influencers. Rather than trying to find the top influencers in a particular community, the brand works with the communities that follow them and reads across their comments and those posted by other members of the community, encouraging everyone to be kind to one another. “Influencer marketing is full-funnel rocket fuel for DTC brands, and this is a great example of how a company’s core values can be brought to life through their community to drive growth,” said Anand Kishore, Founder and CEO of Aspire — an influencer marketing platform for 800+ Shopify merchants and e-commerce brands.

This approach isn’t limited to Beekman 1802. A number of brands have also recently leveraged influencer marketing to raise brand awareness while boosting sales for their products, such as Glossier, Morphe, and NYX.

“… The influencers of the current generation are some of the most outspoken, progressively minded voices on their platforms,” said Brady Donnelly, global Chief Marketing Officer of the integrated, tech-enabled, omnichannel global distribution platform for beauty and wellness brands PCA Group. “Hyper-focused on inclusion and acceptance, they align with the values of many of the brands they represent so they are able to push their followers and fans to trust those brands on a more emotional, value-based level, which is longer lasting.”