Welcome to Strictly Business, Variety's weekly podcast featuring conversations with industry leaders about the business of media and entertainment. I'm Cynthia Lyttleton, co editor in chief of Variety Today. My guests are Adam Borston and Matt Crowley, co CEOs of Studio seventy one. Studio seventy one is a company that is part talent agency, part production company, part marketing firm,
and a distribution specialist. They work with social media creators to boost their reach, diversify their platforms, and expand into ancillary businesses. Studio seventy one is owned by German media heavyweight pro sebon Borston and Crowley are based in Los Angeles. Regular listeners to Strictly Business will note that Studio seventy one works in similar channels as Jellysmack, a company who's president,
Sean Atkins was last week's guest. As I have mentioned here more than once, I'm really trying to understand how the creator economy is evolving into a sustainable content business unto itself. Companies like Studio seventy one and Jellysmack are the evidence of a true talent marketplace. Emerging from what had been a wild West of DIY. Creators Borston and Crawley were good enough to walk me through their basic business models and answer my questions about where they see
the growth opportunities for this emerging medium. Unfortunately, I failed my first job as host, which is to get interview subjects to identify themselves when there are two of them. So after this quick break, the first voice you will hear will be Adam Borston. So don't go anywhere.
City National Bank doesn't generalize. They specialize from entertainment and food and bade rich to real estate and tech. Their dedicated team of bankers has strategic solutions for all of your unique industry needs. Work with a team who knows your industry while getting the scale of their parent company, RBC City National Bank. See what personal can do for you at CNB dot com.
And we're back with insights on the creator economy from Studio seventy one co CEOs Adam Borston and Matt Crowley. Matt Crawley and Adam Borston, co CEOs of Studio seventy one, Thank you so much for joining me today.
Thank you, thanks for having us, Yes, thanks.
For having us.
Let's start by telling us, telling us the Studio seventy one story. What is it that is your primary business focus and how do you make money?
Sure? Absolutely so. Studio seventy one is a creator services company, which basically means we partner with digital talent and brands and help them build their business in a variety of ways. The three key ways that we help creators grow are via ad sales, so we have a sales team and we help them sell ads across their different footprint and know their digital platforms. Production, we have a production space, we help the creators make more content and support their
existing content pipeline. And then distribution, which basically means, you know, we have talent that are putting videos up on YouTube, and we have a whole team of editors that is essentially taking that content, optimizing it and putting on a variety of different platforms. So we, yeah, are built that way.
Tell me how did how did the company come to be? How did you put all those sort of component parts together?
Yeah, I think you know from the genesis, it started as a very traditional talent management company that was really focused on one platform and since Adam and I have since taken over in the past years, we've truly diversified across a multitude of different platforms and a multitude of different audiences.
Yeah, I think when you look at the creator economy, a lot of you know, sort of a lot of professionals approach it from a talent management standpoint. Again, sort of an older model of creator networks like ours was very much to treat it like a talent management company.
The challenge was there would be a lot of different clients and there was sort of a limited amount of services, so there'd be you know, some of these companies said tens of thousands of clients, and as Matt mentioned, we're really focused on one platform, let's say YouTube, and a sort of a set of services for those platforms. We, on the other hand, approach it more like media business. We view all of these creators as media businesses. And you know my background, I came from the publisher space.
I was at BuzzFeed before this, you know, Matt was at a variety of different studios, and so we partner with creators and really help them, you know, have that infrastructure that a media business should have, whether it's sales, production, distribution. We act as sort of the backbone of their ability to grow and essentially make more revenue on their platforms.
And essentially just to kind of add on to that is, you know, my background was more on the television space and then digital video through Hulu and then coming over with Studio seventy one. It was chasing eyeballs and time and attention and in the you know, that's a media vinear.
I mean, that's that's the definition of a media business.
In the traditional linear business, it was more television focused, and then it kind of focused a little bit more to digital video, and then this new creator economy kind of emerged and all the eyeballs started going to different niche creators and they were capturing more time and attention from these audiences, and we build upon that across a variety of platforms.
How would you say that the core of the talent representation core has been It sounds like it's been crucial for your for the company to survive and grow because there were, you know, a few just a few years ago, there were a lot of different creator networks they called they were called MSNs, remember just a few years ago, and they've all, you know, in various stages kind of
either either unraveled or kind of disbanded. What has allowed Studio seventy one to kind of go in the opposite direction, which is really aggregating we were just talking about I noticed on comScore, you know, in aggregate, have you rank Studio seventy one ranks quite high in just overall impressions and general Internet activity. And yet I think that with all due respect, I don't think people would say, oh,
that's a Studio seventy one show. So I'm kind of curious about talking about at this moment in your growth, are you looking to really like enhance the enhance the reputation of Studio seventy one or is it still more like a classic talent agency, Your your clients are your brands.
Right, So I think, first of all, to address your first question about the MCN space, am sense.
Yeah.
So we have structured ourselves really to be, you know, a creator services company that works across many different platforms. I think the old model was again very focused on YouTube, with a limited set of services around uploading content to YouTube, maybe some brand deals and activations here and there. You know, what really has allowed us to thrive is expanding that reach and expanding our support across every medium possible. So we are supporting creators through our podcast division.
We have over one.
Hundred podcasts in our division. We you know, help them produce shows, distribute sell ads against those shows. We are taking creator content and putting it on connected TVs and distributing content that way. So our distribution business has been huge for us. And then our ad sales business again is something that is pretty expansive. So we are packaging up inventory and selling ads across everything from YouTube, to connected TVs to audio to you know, a lot of different.
Platforms, napchat, a variety of different platforms, and I think, you know, from a more traditional sense, we are again seeking these different audiences and these niche audiences across all of these different platforms. And back to your question around are we forward facing as a studio seventy one brand know, the creators are their own brands, and we're selling audiences across all of these creators regardless of what platform they
they're on. So that might be YouTube, that might be Snap, that might be a podcast, but we're we have the ability to target those audiences across all these different creator outlets.
So the key for us has been diversification and I think that is something that was lacking in the past, and we really sort of built on that, focused on it, and have really helped talent grow across different platforms. So diversification has been incredibly important for us as we support creators across so many different platforms, and we think that that was a component that was lacking in the older model that was very focused on YouTube. That and we are,
as Matt mentioned, a B to B company. We want our talent to be very forward facing that we work with and we want to be behind the scenes supporting them as that infrastructure that helps them grow.
How what would you do you have like a core base of people that you work closely with or is it kind of a more project by project basis in terms of in terms of the talent that you actually work with.
Yes, so we have a core set of talent. I would say we try to keep the list intentionally as small as possible, but it's around a thousand creators. And for that group of talent, really we work with them in a variety of different ways. For some of them, we help them just distribute, so take their content from YouTube, you know, edit it and put it on Facebook and
Snapchat and you know connected TVs. For other talent, we sell ads and that's our big focus for that, you know, selling media sales against their you know, content on YouTube, as well as brand integrations, which is like when talent you know, shouts out different brands and gives different in video promotions. And then for others we help them on production support. You know, we have a big space in Burbank, that's our studio space. A lot of cut talent come through.
There, beautiful downtown Burbank.
Yes, of course, we're a lot of digital videos get produced and we work with a lot of great creators there. So again it's a wide variety of services that we work on with different talent, but we do have that core group that we work with and again our goal is to really help them grow across every different platform.
Do you have Is it set up somewhat like a traditional studio and that you have content people and ad sales people. I mean, do you have a lot of this under the studio seventy one roof in terms of like distribution help and advertising sales.
Yeah, absolutely, and in fact obviously it's all under one roof and it depends on really what the creator needs, right, So as Adam mentioned, we work with creators that already have an existing audience on one platform and bringing those audiences to different platforms, and then we insert those teams. So if we're looking to use distribution as an outlet to grow an audience, we'll use the We'll go to
the distribution team. If we're looking to gain more revenue and media sales, we'll go to the media sales team and look for additional opportunities around their existing channels and other ways to bring revenue streams in from non traditional means. So that's a way that all of our teams kind of cross collaborate to expand upon the creators, you know, core businesses.
Yeah, and to also touch on something you know, when I came over to Studio seventy one, I had come from the publisher space, so I was one of the early employees at BuzzFeed. I was one of their first LA employees who helped launch their video division and ran business development and operations for their video division. And when I was at BuzzFeed, I know, you know, Matt saw
this on the studio side. It was this elaborate operation with a team of analytics professionals, a team of editors, producers, you know, people just focus on optimizing the thumbnails and the art that you click on when you watch videos, and I remember thinking, wow, that's it's such an incredible
sort of apparatus that's been built. Imagine if that were applied to the creator space, where essentially a lot of talent are building audiences that are just as big as any publisher, but they're making videos just in their basement. So we want us to sort of provide that infrastructure and a full sort of studio set of you know, resources across advertising and production and distribution to really help creators grow and become their own media company.
Yeah, and that's exactly a lot of these creators are media companies in their own, but they come to Studio seventy one to expand upon their offerings, whether that's through direct media sales, whether that's through distribution. We have the ability, the tools, the people, and the resources to actually get them to the place where they need to be. Whereas they're already a well known brand on their own right.
And so if a creator comes in and they have, you know, they're established someone, they have a YouTube presence, and they're looking to you to bring them into other platforms. Would you have a traditional like a creative meeting where you would sit down with an editor or a producer type I'm just trying to envision in totally because old school, you know, total old school Hollywood terms sort of how that's being applied in your company.
Absolutely, yes. So we have a Creator Partnerships team. So when a talent wants to work with us and sort of signs up for our services, they meet with a Creator Partnerships manager who essentially assesses their business and figures out, you know, where can we help you grow? Because you're absolutely right, a lot of times they already are doing one thing extremely well. They're already let's say, putting videos up on Snapchat or Facebook and optimizing videos and know
those platforms really well. So you know, the Creator Partnership manager will try to figure out what can we provide that's a real value for you, and a lot of cases it's just ad sales. You know. We have a team of sellers based out of the World Trade Center building in New York City who essentially have direct connections with the big media buyers and we can help funnel a lot of advertising in a very targeted way to videos. So that's a big you know, a service that we provide some.
Way beyond the programmatic you know, the bingo card of what you know what you get on any given day.
Absolutely, and then other times it might be production. So let's say they're making X number of videos a week or a month, we can say, hey, we can partner with you, invest in your business from a production standpoint and help you make more content. So, yes, there is always an initial meeting where we assess where can we really provide a lot of additional value and essentially be a set of resources for you that you wouldn't already be doing yourself.
And do you do? How do How does Studio seventy one make money? Is it a revenue share it is? Is it a standard client fee? How does it? How does it work?
Yeah?
I think it's you know, more of a case by case scenario based on what the creator is looking for, right, So I think it is a little bit of a wall crawl run. We don't try to do everything with everybody all at once. But it back to Adam's point. If it is something or they're looking for media sales,
they'll come to us from a media sales standpoint. There will be some traditional like repe share agreement with the particular creator, or there's a production services where there's you know, a certain fee that's discussed beforehand before we're we actually go down that route. So it really is a case by case scenario based on the services that we provide to the various creators that we work with.
I'd love for you to talk about sort of some of the levels that people work at and how just you know, what the paths to people really you know, monetizing their own di y content or or you know, their own self produced content.
Yeah, and it's obviously the most important question for creators. You know, this is a business, this is something where they have a dedicated fan base, but they obviously want to make money and figure out a way to grow their revenue streams. So for us, I think two things that we're seeing a lot that are very important for talent and this is something we always stress is interactivity.
How are you interacting with your audience and helping to gain more sort of devoted and engaged fan bases through sort of the way that you're reaching out to them that you're producing content. And then recency constantly being involved with the zeitgeist producing more content. I think gone are the days where creators would just make one piece of
content and upload it to YouTube a week. Now in these days, a lot of creators are creating videos daily or sometimes several times a day, So we are really seeing that cadence of uploading is very important. So again, these are these sort of like areas where we try to partner with talent and help them grow how they're monetizing their content.
Yeah, and I think in terms of the interactivity, it's them interacting with their fan base and then the fan base also interacting with their creators and also their friends.
For so long that the real end game, the payday was a TV show, a movie, option, a book. Are you finding though, that there are people sort of a variation of my last question, but are there people that are really like they are devoted to the social media world. There their focus is not going into you know, getting into mainstream media through like through through generating buzz on social but then I really want to be a TV
star or movie star. Are you finding that there are people that like this is becoming its own true medium.
Yeah, It's it's a very good question. There's in the past, there's sort of this concept that social media or the you know, digitally released content was a sort of base level to build a fan base and then you would sort of graduate from that onto television or film or some other form of entertainment. You know, the creators that we work with, this is their passion, this is the way that they communicate with their fans, and so it's not so much as moving on to a different medium entirely.
It's more diversifying onto more platforms. So diversification is what we've seen is essentially the fastest way for creators to make more money. So if you are creating videos for YouTube, you know, we would recommend that you figure out a way to build a business on Instagram and on Facebook and potentially on connected TVs, and we partner with talent
and help them sort of do that. So again, it is not so much as changing the medium so much as building out your digital business and to be a little bit more robust and hopefully a little more resilient to ups and downs in the market.
When you say connected TV's, are you're talking about like creating your own fast channel kind of thing.
That's exactly right. So we've created creator apps that live on Roku that live on Amazon Fire for I don't know seventy plus creators, and a lot of them are seeing great traction where essentially their audience used to watch them just on YouTube or on mobile, and now they're really watching it as though we're a TV program, sort of in that lean back experience, and we have a whole team just focused on this area and essentially crafting the way that the content looks and feels, so it
really resembles a television show with ad.
Breaks and all of that.
Don't even think about scrolling up. We'll be right back after this short break.
City National Bank doesn't generalize. They specialize from entertainment and food and beverage to real estate and tech. Their dedicated team of bankers has strategic solutions for all of your unique industry needs. Work with a team who knows your industry while getting the scale of their parent company, RBC City National Bank. See what personal can do for you at CNB dot com.
And we're back with more from Studio seventy one co CEOs Adam Borston and Matt Crowley. Can you give me some examples of creators that are successful in their niches but not at all the stereotype of what people well think think a social media creator is Yeah.
Absolutely. I think entrepreneurialism is something that's a word that sort of gets thrown around a lot. You know, these creators really started a business as a startup, but you know, there is a side to them that is very creative and a lot of them have a side to them
this is extremely entrepreneurial. We've seen a lot of great transitions where you know, a talent has started just making very simple, you know, beauty videos that go just on YouTube, uh, and then they are able to expand into starting a podcast, to starting you know, to get involved in their own line of beauty products, starting to figure out, you know, which are the brands that they work well with, which you know, what are their audience really looking to see,
and how can they communicate better with their audience. So they are very much optimizing their business and it's an extremely like sophisticated way that I think is surprising to some. But as far as some great examples, you know, we have gamers. We have a we have a gaming channel that we work very closely with called f g t V. It's a fan gaming channel and it really was a
man making videos with his son and playing games. It's extremely entertaining and f GTV has been able to sort of transition the business to become something that's much bigger and really just a just an empire. It started to launch their own fast channels, their own apps on connected TVs, which is something that we help them with. They've definitely expanded into the sort of graphic novel space. I think
they're doing their own uh, you know stories there. We made an announcement recently that we're developing an animated series that we take out and that's going to be something very exciting. So definitely that you know, f GTV is a great example of something that started just with you know, video game commentary and has now become something that's a really fantastic business and incredibly entertaining property.
How is the world of Madison Avenue responding to this sort of uprising of talent.
Yeah, from a from an advertiser and an agency perspective, they very much are supporting the creator economy in a multitude of ways. And it's kind of goes back to what we were discussing earlier, which is they're trying to
chase eyeballs. That's audiences, time and attention. So I think it was last night where where the v m as and you know, the v m as on MTV of the old days would garner huge, huge audiences, but those the same amount of eyeballs are you know doubled within you know, two videos or one video of certain creator channels.
So I really do think that brands are following those trends and following you know, the more brand saved content content creators across all social platforms and saying there's more reach that I can get through buying you know, traditional creator outlets than some you know, linear television channel or even Temple because their audience is a little bit more niche and it's more specific to their brands.
I also think that data that brands are getting back and media buyers are getting back is pretty you know, far surpasses uh when you can get in other mediums. So certainly part of what we do when we facilitate advertising is provide very detailed reports to help create you know, advertisers and brands understand who were they able to reach, you know, under what circumstances, what were the demographics, you know, what were the different audience segments and what did they
look like? And it's something that's pretty amazing that across digital platforms you can really put that together and have a really clear understanding of your ROI for advertising.
It's been, it's been, you know, it's been fascinating for me to watch the sort of the TikTok effect of having both the industry and advertisers be willing to you know, normally the industry does not part with its content, but realizing that giving you know, allowing people to use a few seconds of a trailer or or the TikTok challenging people, you know, come up with your most creative ad for
Tide or whatever. It might be like that, there's a letting go process, but but in return getting so much either goodwill or creative that like creative beyond you could. Can you talk about the TikTok effect on your business? Has it been? Has it been profound in terms of that platform opening up possibilities? Yes?
Absolutely, I mean that is really something where we're seeing that recency effect take place. A lot of creators are producing more content for that platform, and the you know, TikTok as a platform allows for a lot of sort of this duet feature where you can, you know, collaborate with other creators, you can have fans submit videos that you can then react to. So we've seen it sort of open up a whole new level of engagement with your audience from a brand standpoint, and that's something that
you brought up. We're seeing a lot of brands utilizing TikTok in a really interesting way. I mean, a brand like Chipotle is having you know, different creators, you know, submit hacks that they use when it comes to their
menu or different menus ideas. And in one case, I think recently, it was a TikTok creator that had made suggestions or sort of shared some of the hacks that they use when they go to Chipotle, and then Chippotle incorporated that into their menu and actually, now you can go buy this this amalgamation of Chipotle items that the creator put together. So I think a lot of brands are highly engaged on this and it's you know, it's really yielding a lot of dividends.
Yeah, and I think it's also a shift where brands are becoming influencers themselves and they're actually taking that. Chipotle is a great example. Duelingo is another great example. Of you know, a brand that's going out and creating editorial content with their mascot in such a way that's engaging to their fan base, and it's it's it's you know, TikTok videos that is more short form and is highly
engaged for the audience. So it's this new kind of feeling of brands are also trying to emulate influencers and using platforms like TikTok and Instagram become influencers themselves.
The TikTok has been it really is, even even among the social platforms. It feels like a leap and a leap into kind of a medium onto itself, a short attention span medium, but a medium. But it is actually as they say, you know, it's it's it's harder to write a short story than a long story, like it forces you to distill the essence of what you're talking about. It's it's fascinating, it's overwhelming, but it's also fascinating.
Now absolutely, we've actually seen some ability for creators to migrate an audience from TikTok to more longer formats. We've released several podcasts in our network which started out as sort of TikTok handles making very short videos and then became a much bigger show. And what you do when you see that migration is it sort of selects for those highly engaged fans who are going to have, you know,
that interest to see much longer programming. And so you start putting together this fan base for your podcast of you know, super loyal you know, and and eager fans that want to just see more and more. And that's very active for brands. So again, starting with TikTok, which sort of is this very broad reaching platform, does allow you to sort of move audience to other platforms and again create a really interesting business model.
When you're selling ads on behalf of a creator, do you do your teams find do you do a are you able to do a package? I'm packaging ads across a podcast, across Instagram, across TikTok for this for this talent or do you do they tend to do, you know, platform by platform deals. I'm curious about how flexible advertising has become around social media creators that work in many different pawns.
Yeah, that's a great question. Actually, that's exactly how we position ourselves from a sales perspective, which is If you want to buy Facebook, you go to Facebook the platform. If you want to buy YouTube, you go to YouTube the platform. If you want to buy an audience around a specific creator, you go to Studio seventy one, Because Studio seventy one can sell you exactly what you were just asking. Can I buy the podcast? Can I buy the Instagram? Can I buy TikTok? Can I buy YouTube?
The answer is yes, and we do package that together
and we've seen it with great success. We've had a variety of different advertisers come to us and say, hey, I want to work with so and so auto creator like a Donut media like and the brand being Valveline, and they've purchased a three sixty program around not only the creators you know, core YouTube channels, but also audience extensions across a various different social media outlets and their podcasts, so and then reach extensions beyond just the Donut brand
into other automotive enthusiast brands. So we've done that with great success, and that's actually how we position ourselves. Whereas Studio seventy one is kind of the backdrop to access the voices across all these different platforms rather than going platform by platform specific.
Campaigns and the amount of the after you know, after sale info that you and deliver to that advertiser must be just incredible. And I'm guessing that some of your analytics are also kind of part of the whole package.
Absolutely, and in fact, with regard just to podcasts, you know, podcasting does have limitations when it comes to the analytics.
That you get back.
We release over half of our podcast I think now it's maybe even more than that, both in audio and video formats, precisely because it does you know, on the video side, it's obviously more engaging for fans, but from a brand standpoint, you can get a lot of interesting data back about how you know, advertisements are affecting audiences and reaching audiences on the video side as well as the audio side.
And we're constantly optimizing. We're constantly working with different brands and seeing what works best for that particular brand based on what their KPIs are. So if they're currently buying across all mediums and Instagram's doing the best, will optimize more their media spend towards the Instagram versus a YouTube or you know, facebooks and something like that.
This is a very bespoke business, and that sounds to me like you need a lot of humans. Like this is still you know, I think I think there's a lot of people that have this idea that in social media that all this all is done by some form of giantic digital auction. But it sounds to me like you've got human beings putting together packages on behalf of your behalf of your folks.
Yeah, I think it's it's a robust team. We have offices in la in New York, in London, in Toronto, so definitely we have boots on the ground who are able to help creators at any given moment. I think the goals that we do want to be that team that's there to support them if they don't have certain elements of that team on their own. With that said, though, you know, we do try to optimize our business and we find ways to you know, create tools that target
advertising in different ways to streamline the process. We have been using AI more in our business to help connect brands with with talent to help sort of index lots of videos that are being created, get a sense of who a talent is, and then pitch that to a brand in a really sort of streamlined and you know, easy to digest way, it don't matter if you have anything else that there.
Yeah, I think it's it's one feeds off the other, right, So obviously there's always going to be a human element to sales to put together the right packages for the right brands. And we also have internal tools, as Adam kind of mentioned, that go through brand suitability, brand safety for particular brands and pre vet some of that. And as we deliver more of these campaigns based on a particular set of KPIs whatever the brand is really looking
to really lean into or stay away from. From a brand safety perspective, it educates our system a little bit better. From a targetability standpoint, it recommends different videos and different creators that we can then add to certain brands, and it also shows us which creators probably aren't performing as well from a brand safety and a brand suitable perspective to remove from those particular campaigns.
Is the brand safety thing has has obviously been huge for the biggest of blue chip advertisers. Do you feel like that is It's hard to say under control because it's individual people, But do you feel like you know, I don't have to tell you a couple of years ago, there really was almost a taint on digital advertising, and boy did the TV did the broadcast net and broadcasting cable networks try to milk that for all it's worth,
but it does. It feels like that cloud has moved a little bit off of you know, digital advertising.
I think it's gotten a lot better. Transparently. I came to Studio seventy one right in the heat of the ad apocalypse craziness, and that exactly right back to your point.
Was there one thing, Was there one or two things that catalyzed it?
Well, there there's a variety of different things that kind of all happens around the same time, and that was re uploads of videos with inappropriate content.
Unfortunate juxtapositions on YouTube I recall now.
Yeah, And ultimately it really came down to the different platforms not having safeguards in place. And actually Studio seventy one was very forward facing and Adam and I and our team came out with a brand safety product product called context to make sure that not only was it brand safe for the brand, but it was contextually relevant for that brand to be within a certain creator channel, but not only the channel. We went as deep as the video and we were scanning videos both from a
human perspective but also from an AI perspective. And again that was seven years ago. It's gotten much better from platform to platform. I will say from being around certain videos, I think there's always going to be a little bit of you know, nervousness for market of oh no, am I going to be around you know, inappropriate content because there is always that fear of you know, someone going
rogue and uploading inappropriate content. Not so much from a studio seventy one standpoint, just from a general market standpoint. But the shift has really been about where is the content being delivered? Is it on fraudulent websites? Is it being viewed by human being? Is it running on AutoPlay below the fold where a human is not actually consuming
that video? And I think that's been more of a concern more on the byside for advertisers to make sure that if they're running ads in front of content, it's actually being watched by human being.
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