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Ian Schafer on Why Creators Might Need Upfronts
00:21:18
Next in Creator Media spoke with Ian Schafer, co-founder and president of Ensemble, on how he's trying to help brands connect with the top 1% of creators, while helping those folks build out full fledged media businesses.
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- [00:00]
A
Looking to get more out of your YouTube advertising? With view Planner, you can buy with total confidence and clarity. View Planner is a verified YouTube brand suitability and contextual targeting partner in the YouTube measurement program. Recognized by Google as a trusted and independent leader in driving and measuring performance on YouTube, their advanced technology gives you a clear edge. Only with View Planner, we're talking custom curated contextual collections, exclusive content strategies, transparent reporting and AI driven optimization to deliver real results. Don't let your budget go to waste. Partner with View Planner. Experience the difference. Visit viewplanner.com now to unlock your full advertising potential on YouTube. That's V U E P L-A-N-N-E-R.com hi everybody. Welcome to Next in Creator Media. I'm Mike Shields. I'm here with Ian Schaefer. He is the president and co founder of Ensemble. Hey, and thanks for being here.
- [00:47]
B
Great to be with you, Mike.
- [00:48]
A
So you're the perfect guest right now because you're kind of right in the middle of everything I'm trying to talk about in this show and I know you as a digital ad leader, ad guy. Tell me what the vision is behind Ensemble. What, what opening you saw here, and then I want to get into a whole bunch of questions about the market.
- [01:03]
B
Yeah, for sure. I mean, you know, if you look at the creator economy as like an actual economy, it's a really long tail. Right. There are, I think by last count, there's probably like 8 million independent content creators in the United States as defined by, you know, someone who's made like a dollar or two. Right. Like from, from creating content. Anytime you have like a long tail economy like that, it's going to be really propped up by like the.01%. It's kind of like universe of basketball players. And there's only 450 good enough to be in the NBA.
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A
Right.
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B
So the idea is like, instead of looking at, you know, creators and the number of them as a marketplace, which is where a lot of the startups in the creator economy have gone, Investors.
- [01:47]
A
Love market, meaning like connecting people or being like, you know, yellow pages of creators, that kind of thing.
- [01:55]
B
Sure. Using algorithms to say, oh, you're a brand that does this. Who wants to reach these people? Like, these are the perfect, like micro creators or influencers for you. Right. Like, that's all well and good, you know, but we're taking a more curatorial approach. I mean, I wanted to partner with Issa because she's proving in Hollywood that she's one of the greatest curators out there.
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A
And so talk about like as inay.
- [02:19]
B
And so what working together with the team and her, we, we, we came out of the gates about a year ago, you know, with a group of creators that we said, these are going to be who's next. They may not all hit whatever that next big thing is. And I think what the next big thing is is different depending on the individual. Maybe it's GD and film, maybe it's merch, maybe it's products or makeup or things like that. But, you know, the idea is that there are a certain number of creators, albeit, you know, on the smaller end, who are capable of doing incredible things over longer periods of time. And whether those are longer term brand partnerships or original IP shows, series that may start out as digital and they find their way to TV in some way or another, we want to work with them and effectively take a run at an alternative future on Hollywood where people make their content consumption decisions based on who they follow, not what services they subscribe to. And so that's what we've been building. And you know, it's been, it's been a great year and we're blessed to have some incredible brand partners and working with some really tremendous creators. But we've only just begun.
- [03:25]
A
So there might be a simple answer to this, but is there an analogy? Like, are you trying to be their management team, their programming team, their media company? Are you helping them with their business? How do we, what, how do we categorize you if we can?
- [03:40]
B
Yeah, so we are not, we do not manage or represent talent that is a completely separate business that's about deal flow. Right, like, and, you know, keeping them paid and fed in some cases. Right. Like that is, that is not us. We do work directly with the, both the creators and their management representation, but we're effectively something that looks more like a studio in that way, in the sense that we're packaging talent, we're developing IP with that talent. In some cases, we're developing IP independently and casting them as talent. You know, we're working with publishers and streaming platforms to distribute that content. But, you know, I would say we're probably closer to a studio in the modern definition sense than we are, you know, an ad agency or a, or a rep firm.
- [04:25]
A
And how much of this is driven by, when you talk about 8 million creators, that's incredibly daunting and hard for brands to figure out. They know the big names, but they, and they know some in, you know, the middle. But it's really hard to navigate versus the same Thing on the traditional media side where they don't always know who to partner with, who to put together project. Is it both of those things? Like, what's the opening there?
- [04:46]
B
Yeah, I mean, it's, it's casting, it's packaging. You know, we're not limited to the creators that we have worked with or that we want to work with. Sometimes, you know, a situation will say, oh, there's this creator that we don't currently have a relationship, you know, that is perfect for it. But I would say, like, there's also a mission layer to this in that the creator economy, just like any other economy, is inherently, like, inequitable. You know, there are certain folks that get, you know, perceived as brand safe, even though they're not. And then there are certain folks who say there aren't brand safe, even though they are. Oftentimes that has to do with the language they use or the audiences that they serve. You know, it's not really that great, you know, and the fact is, is that, you know, creators who are from underrepresented communities, at least in media, are 50% less likely to get a brand deal. And, you know, when we saw that as something, that was not just a problem that needs to be solved, but it was opportunity to explore in that. What we've seen time and time again is that some of the most popular creators are the ones who appeal to the broadest audiences. And very often those are creators who, who might be black, Asian American.
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A
And they're getting, they're getting fewer deals because they're under, they're less known, they're coming.
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B
They might be perceived as niche when they are anything but to be honest, look at a guy like Kai Sanat. I mean, now he's like in the middle of this big McDonald deal. He's a star. Like, it is like, you ask anybody under the age of 16, they know exactly who as much as under the age of 25. Right?
- [06:18]
A
And he might have got stuck in the minority budgets for. At one point in history.
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B
And like, you know, and, and I think that's. That undercuts their ability to, to grow. They're all entrepreneurs, right? At the end of the day, they're building their own little mini media company. The problem is they're surrounded by management, but not infrastructure. And so what we're helping them to do is like actually like build that infrastructure around them so they have a pipeline from idea to original series as opposed to just like kind of uploading whatever it is that they want to make to a TikTok. Or a YouTuber, Instagram, and effectively like losing their rights to that topic.
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A
Is it, you know, there's, you said how top heavy this world is. Is there?
- [06:59]
B
Yeah.
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A
How big is that, like next level that is going to be. Be able to build a media company?
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B
I think it's probably like 0.1%. Like I really do. I think it's that small. But I mean, I think that's a good thing.
- [07:12]
A
Like, it's a pretty big number.
- [07:14]
B
It is, but it's like, you know, it's like a tenth of a percent. It's like, you know, it's, it's still not that many. And like, you know, and, and some of them are going to work and some of them aren't. Some of they're going to be, you know, succeed on the backs of their ideas, not just their talent, you know, because a lot of this, these creators, they have to be writers, editors, directors, producers. Right.
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A
It's like sometimes they're doing marketing.
- [07:39]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so. But what we're finding is the ones who do succeed, they're great at several of those roles. Yeah, it was funny. Issa was recently on the Seventeen Brooklyn podcast with Carmelo Anthony and Kid Merrow, and they were talking about how one of the most valuable skills that you can have as entertainment industry talent right now is editing. And you know, who's developing the best chops at that are the people who are literally, you know, trying to figure out how to turn like two minutes of content into 15 seconds of great content that's all editing, you know, and I, and I think that's like, and it's not just the technological side of that.
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A
It's the, that seems aimed at my podcast specifically like that, like that I, that I, that I have about 15 seconds each week that are really worth listening to.
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B
I mean, well, in many ways, dude, like, if you look at the, you know, long form content in general, like podcasts are a perfect example. You know, when podcasts are successful, we, when I, and when I say successful, successful financially, it's because they're able to elicit a Wellspring of like 15 second clips when they heavily branded. Yeah. And then distributed. It's almost as if the podcast exists in service of those clips.
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A
Right, right.
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B
Yeah.
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A
That's like the Joe Rogan secret a lot of people talk about. Yeah, you probably have answered some of this already. How have we done as an industry? And I'm, I'm talking really about like the media buying, planning, selling part section of the, of the business in terms of figuring out where creators fit, how to fund them, how to build them into plans, versus treating them as something that's an occasional or a one off or an influencer thing.
- [09:17]
B
Yeah, they're, they're, a lot of them are, are in either the inventory phase, which is very transactional. It's like, oh, this person has 30,000 followers. I want to reach their audience. They're probably higher engaged people. The smaller size. You know, we'll pay them a couple thousand dollars to make a video. Right. That's kind of like an inventory phase where the best we need to get to is a collaboration phase. That's the phase that Kai is in right now with McDonald. You know, where it's more like McDonald's goes to Kai, like, how can we make the stuff that you want to make even better? You know, he's like, I love Icar. And it's like this weird thing loves Icar. Right. McDonald's helps make that happen. You know, Amanda Cosberg comes on the show and they could do that or get help, get, you know, Serena Williams as a guest. Right. It's not like he would have had necessarily some trouble doing that before, but now you've got the infrastructure and the capital, McDonald's behind you too. Those are the partnerships that we're doing with the brands that we work with. They're longer term collaborations. You know, we pair this individual who's both a creator and distributor. Right, right. And we say that, hey, the best content that's going to come out with this person is, is, is through a relationship that evolves over time. And that is not the way they're used to working. They're used to working, you know, with a negotiation with probably their manager, agent in the middle of it, knowing what they should make per video because they know what it costs to make it. They know what the size of their crew is and they, they compare that to the market. I look at it more like, you know, when New Balance chooses to collaborate with, with ALD brand. Right. And right. Like that. That is, they're, they're doing that because they want to collaborate with the creative director, Teddy. Right. Like behind that. And so that is a long term partnership that results in long term or longer term not only brand growth, but sales. And I think that's the same kind of effect that we'll see is that these are going to be positioned more as longer term collaborations than transactional, you know, video purchasing.
- [11:20]
A
It's funny that you say that because I was in an event a couple of weeks ago and there Was a creator Eric talking about this and he's like, I won't do one offs anymore. I've decided like we're saying no to brands and we can, I want to do year long things. And I thought how many creators can do that, have the guts to do that or the clout to do that? And how many brands are going to be okay with that? Like brands love testing, learning and one offs, you know, like.
- [11:44]
B
Well, a lot, a lot of the reason why that continues to happen is because of where the, like what budgets the money is coming from where we've landed is that the budget should be coming out of media budgets. This is working media. And you know, because.
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A
And that's it, that's up for debate still.
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B
I guess it is, it is. Because I think a lot of times like, you know, when you look at where creators sit as a responsibility within a brand or an agency, they're oftentimes sitting in like the social media bucket. Not that, not even the paid social media bucket, like social media bucket, the PR bucket or even the creative bucket. But at the end of the day I think they are media properties. Right. So in the same way that you would pay a great publisher, like a Vox Media, right. To you know, do an ad campaign and then they'd light up their branded content studio around it, you know, our creators are both of those things. And a longer term relationship puts less pressure on each individual video to be a sales pitch. It makes it actually better at the end of the day for an audience. And so, um, when you're able to put paid media support behind that social media content, you can also also optimize to a cost per view. You can get great content at a locked in efficiency. And I don't know why everyone just doesn't say sonny.
- [12:56]
A
Okay, that was actually gonna be my next question because I think there is a desire. You know, it's a vast. When you talk about 8 million creators, it's a vast universe and there's so many different things, ways you can go. But there's a desire maybe. Okay, if it's gonna be working media, I want it to be kind of simple or you know, I want to be able to buy a whole bunch of creator inventory at once and treat it like television or things like the McDonald's integration you talk about are probably never going to be that way. Right. Can this ever be not automated but, but made simpler?
- [13:23]
B
I don't think it should be. I think great creative comes out of friction and not all friction is bad. Right. And so I Think this is a case where you, this is like really helpful friction when you get, you know, ideas getting volley back and forth where, you know, you can look at like storyboards, like around the story and hone those into something great. And again, audience first, right? Always audience first. Because if it doesn't work with the audience, it's not going to work for the brand. And the creators know their audience better than everyone else. And I have to say, like, a lot of the creators that we've worked with are not, are not even used to working that way, even though that's how they want to work. Because they always say, like, oh man, like usually when I work with a brand, you know, they're effectively telling me all the things I need to say, all the, you know, all the beats I need to hit. And we're saying this. No, like, keep those in the back of your mind because we're working over kind of a longer arc. We can hit those over time. But let's like actually like build up the association here between your content audience and this brand and let's have that be like a, dare I say, more authentic collaboration. Because again, like, if a collaboration is transactional, it's going to feel that way.
- [14:33]
A
Yeah. Well, then I guess the pushback will be or how you have to figure out how to make brands okay with that slower buildup. And I want to plug that into something that shows our way. ROI right away. How do I judge? Is that still something you face?
- [14:46]
B
It is, but there's a time and a place for those portions of the media budgets. Right. When we're looking at the media budgets, like a lot of brands, especially the bigger ones, especially the ones that need and prioritize relevance within popular culture. You know, they are the ones who say that, all right, like we actually need our media dollars to create content. And historically they may have done that through a television series that they've done profit placement within or even underwritten or supported or co produced. Yeah, like remember like Pepsi Smash on Yahoo. Right. Which eventually found its way to TV too. Right, that. Or, or, or again with Pepsi, like, you know, kind of Uncle Drew. Right.
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A
Like this is not buying inventory necessarily. It's part of it, but it's not the same thing.
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B
The inventory facilitates discovery from priority audience. But you know, the creative itself is the result of the clarity.
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A
It's early. Do you have any good examples of how things have gone that are, you know, either projects their creators are pumped, come together because you guys. Or great, great ad executions?
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B
Yeah. So I mean, we've we've done some great work even over the last few months, especially around say for example like HBCU homecomings. Those are incredible events and we work with numerous brands to light up content at those homecomings, at these activations. We've done work with Chili's around, you know, activating creators at like, you know, concacafity like you Hesper's Mexico, right, which is like this cultural moment, you know, where we're putting a well known creator and almost like fish out of watering them, right, like into that scenario where they engage with their fans but are able to do so like again as an ambassador of a brand. You know, we've done, you know, kind of skit based things with creators who are just excellent at doing skip based stuff. But like we worked with creator destroying who's a big NFL creator and you know, helped launch this new, you know, campaign with Popeyes around them being the official wing of watching football. And what better of an ambassador than a guy who's like a former professional football player who excels at making highly engaging skill based YouTube football content. You know, he had him come out like do a big press conference and then we systematically been rolling out more content from the, you know, as it relates to that Popeyes brand. So you know what you'll start seeing now more are things that feel like original shows and series coming from us, you know, like episodic things with, you know, with actual like brands of their own.
- [17:08]
A
Does this category eventually have like slates that they bring out to brands every year a la the upfronts and you can jump in and lock it up now, is that not the right way to think about it?
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B
That's 100% the way to think about it.
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A
Okay, have you figured out what kind of series or formats are going to pop yet? Or is it, is it work in progress?
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B
Yes, I mean I would say like the things that we're looking at range from docu series to comedy series to even like live programming, believe it or not. I think there's a real space for that that we've started to see really pop through. Obviously things that Kai done, a lot of things are happening on Twitch was a close partner of ours, but you'll see things from us that fit, you know, many of those areas.
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A
And this is probably a dated question because there for a time when you talk about creators developing IP and series, the presumption was, well, they really, they really would like to get picked up by Netflix or Hulu down the road. They're just, they're just pretending they want to do this now. I don't know if they have those kind of aspirations. Like, do you see them wanting to get on, you know, quote unquote, traditional media or. Not necessarily.
- [18:20]
B
I, I, I think there is, there's a certain element of prestige that goes along with saying, I have a show on Netflix. But the path to that is narrower than it's ever been. Not that ever is like a long time in like, you know, but it's changed a lot as we know it today. But it has changed a lot in the content marketplace kind of sucks right now. You know, there's incredible downward pressure on production budgets. And, you know, I don't think independent content creators, like, are bloating production budgets, but when you're making something for like a streaming service, you're factoring in all the, the relevant production costs that go along with that. You know, shooting an 8K guild, union, labor, right. Like all kinds of things that, that, that bloat something more than it does, like when you make a video for YouTube. But with that said, one of the biggest areas of TV viewing growth is YouTube on TV now. YouTube TV, right. It's like watching YouTube on TV. So do you need a Netflix to get an audience of people that are watching tv? I, Right, you're on.
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A
You got a TV show, right?
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B
I mean, at the end of the day, like, Net Netflix is the, the money that a Netflix is willing to pay or any platform is willing to pay for, for a piece of programming is, is a combination of where they get their revenue. Right. It's like they get revenue from subscribers and they get revenue from advertisers. Increasingly more from advertisers, but still, but they're evaluating their content decisions based on subscriber growth.
- [19:47]
A
Last question for me is how do we break the agency structural challenge you're talking about, about where to, where to fund these things, how to evaluate them. Is that going to happen anytime soon? Is going to be an ongoing challenge.
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B
I actually think the media agencies are doing an excellent job with the way they're thinking about it. I think their heads are already there. I don't think creative agencies are, I don't think the PR firms are, but I do think the media agencies get it because they are the ones, especially at the investment arms of these media agencies. They understand exactly what's happening in the world of Hollywood and to the cost of production. And I think, you know, when we speak to them, it's almost as if, like, they've been waiting for us without knowing it. Right. Like, so like they've been waiting for.
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A
That's what they needed to get this going.
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B
Yeah, they needed, they need to be able to drive scale with efficiency. And again, like, that's a bitch.
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A
Million creators, right? Yeah, yeah.
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B
Yes, yes. And so like, you know, we're, we're bringing that Hollywood mentality to it, like the creative excellence to it, but kind of like the new media, if that's still a phrase, you know, approach to it. Right. Because we're looking at like, you know, hey, like if, if at the end of the day, advertisers are subsidizing this content one way or another, why don't we just cut to the chase and give them what they want, which is great content and a locked in efficiency. So here we are.
- [21:07]
A
All right. Ian, we could, we could talk forever. Great stuff. Really appreciate the time. We're gonna leave it there, but let's talk again. Thank you.
- [21:12]
B
All good. Anytime. Thanks. Bye.