Welcome to Strictly Business, Variety's podcast where industry leaders converse about business deals, strategy, and the future of media and entertainment. I'm Corey Erickson, media analyst at Variety Intelligence Platform. Today's episode features Rachel Delphin, chief marketing officer at live streaming
leader Twitch. Our conversation touched upon the differences between platform specific marketing and in person events, how to keep audiences attracted to and engage with the platform at a time when newer competition is ramping up, as well as the surge of interest in Hollywood towards video games and how that circles back to Twitch. Stay tuned for the full conversation. Welcome back to Strictly Business. I'm here today with Rachel Delphin,
the chief marketing officer of Twitch. Rachel, how long have you been in that position? Which?
Hi, Corey.
I have been in the chief marketing role, chief marketing officer role for about two years now.
I've been at Twitch for five.
Hey, very cool. What were you doing before you took over the marketing efforts there?
I started out five years ago leading the communications team and then over the you know, three year period between being head of comms and then chief Marketing Officer I took on, you know, increased responsibilities for social team, community marketing, community engagement, brand and media, and so it was a real natural progression to overseeing the whole the whole team.
So it's one thing to do community engagement within the Twitch live streaming platform, but you're also active in twitches in person events. I believe your europe incarnation of twitch Con went down earlier this month. Is there also an American counterpart for that? And what are the things that feel especially unique to doing big events for Twitch in person versus you know online.
Yeah, it's a great question. So we did have our European leg of our twitch Con franchise. It was earlier this month, July eighth and ninth. We had it in Paris, France for the first time. You know, we had more than ten thousand community members come to the event. That's creators, that's folks who are viewers and fans and of course brands as well. And we do have a US Twitch confranchise as well that will be later in October this year in Las Vegas for the first time, and again
we'll expect tens of thousands of fans. The US leg of the Twitch confranchise has also been you know, it's where we started, and I think, gosh, I'm gonna get this wrong, probably with seven or eight now that we've actually had in the US as well, So it's a bit more established, a bit a bit bigger than the European conference as well. In terms of, you know, how we think about the interplay between you know, how we operate online as a brand and a service, and how
we operate in person at a events. We see those as really really complementary. You know, it's not online versus offline or I r L those things. You know, at the end of the day, we're all about building community, and those communities start online often because it really breaks down the geographical barriers that keep people from you know, connecting in their hometown or whatever. But the IRL element
of that is really really powerful and meaningful. You know, when we bring people together at twitch Con, they've been friends for months, or they've been friends for years in Twitch, in twitch chat, you know, in the in their communities, and then they see each other for the first or second or you know, it's some kind of reunion and it's really special.
It's really magical.
I think it really deepens those bonds and then you know, they go back to the community building and nurturing and connection that they have online. So we see that online the offline component, the IRL event component, really really powerful mechanism to reinforce that community building that happens online.
So as a primarily you know, creator driven event is twitch Con also generally a very good opportunity for Twitch to partner with companies as well that are active in the media space how to twitch typically you know, foster ad partnerships with companies that want to be able to market towards you know, the wide platform you have there.
Yeah, So the audience for twitch con is is split.
It's about fifty percent creators, of which some of those folks are partners, some of those are affiliates, and some of those are generally streamers, and then the other fifty percent we call community, which is would be more of.
The viewer side behaviors.
Right, So the people who are in the service on chat are fans, They're attending the meet and greets, that kind of thing. And so that's the demographic of twitch con in terms of like how we engage brands there. I mean, it's a really it's a really desirable demographic. We are eighty nine percent Gen Z and millennials, and it's a really leaned in community. You know, they are actually building communities on Twitch, which means they're really highly
engaged in the service. They're very deeply involved in the fandoms that they're part of, and so integrating a brand can be really really powerful and impactful for those brands. You know, when.
We talk about how to do that, which.
Is I think the important part of that, which is lots of brands want to be there, how do you do that in a way that feels really authentic, that feels meaningful. Again, it goes back to this idea of community. So that is really what we're here for, and that's what happens on Twitch and at our events and for brands to be able to participate and do that in a way that accrues really positive sentiment and experience for them as well as for the community. It is about
contributing to the community. It's about being a participant in the community. It is supporting creators within those communities, and that is received really positively by their communities. Right, So the fans of those creators who see this validation that the brands provide. This you know, very tangible mechanism, you know, means of support for them as well, turns into these moments of celebration as well, and we see brands do that really well and really embrace that.
I think some recent.
Examples of that are you know, at TwitchCon, of course, is very top of mind for me at the moment, but you know, we had brands like Samsung and Samsung Mobile in particular, who is leaning more heavily into the gaming market, and they have a you know stream team Team Galaxy and you know mobile tournaments, but also really have a supportive posture with that team, bringing them together because networking is really important for content creators on Twitch,
as I'm sure it is elsewhere as well. Crocs was another brand that was at twitch Con. They sponsored Artist Ali where we feature as you might imagine, artists from Twitch who are actually selling you know, tangible wares as well as you know, emote artistry and that kind of thing, and they gave them the opportunity to create their own gibbets, you know, the sort of items that go on on Crops really tapped into the creativity.
Of the community.
Acknowledging the creativity of the community and that and that you know, broader sort of arts and crafts movement that exists on Twitch, and then giving them a canvas to express themselves. So those were those were you know, they had presents at the events, both from a sponsorship standpoint, but also you know, physical presence.
Another good example I think is Chipotle.
We had a Super Ultra Combo Day and sorry, super Ultra Combo Week and in which we've really celebrated the fighting game community. So at the time street Fighter six highly anticipated, very popular new game release, but also just
nostalgia around the franchise. Chipotle actually provided to people who were engaging with content around that concept, and those streamers with freequalk and chips right if they watched a certain amount of time, which you know gets people very excited and certainly more engaged and again really drives value.
To the creators who are participating.
So I think those are the uh, you know, some recent examples but also examples of you know, what it takes to do it well.
So what have been some crucial developments in leaning more into the community marketing aspect, especially you know, since as you said, what eighty nine percent of you know, the Twitch creator The Twitch creators skews pretty heavily towards gen Z you know, aka people who are probably going to be very into, you know, prioritizing their own sense of brand development and you know, independence with what they like
to do on Twitch. How how does Twitch kind of work its way in there in terms of aiding you know, their own marketing more catering to younger creators specifically.
Yeah, I think the the offline aspect is really important because, as you said, yeah, eighty nine percent of our total population, so that's creators and viewers our skew.
You know, gen Z and millennial very digitally native uh population.
Of course, you know gen Z in particular has grown up entirely with you know, a life that has had the Internet at their disposal. So what's interesting about that is those generations and those people also really really value in person connection. And I think that is probably a you know, direct response to having so much of their lives also being online, is that you really value the offline connection. So one is you know, we've had twitch Con,
We've talked about that. We've also had community meetups historically, so these are grassroots groups that are formed by members of the community around certain locations.
So there's a Twitch.
Toronto, there's Twitch Adelaide, there's Twitch Portland, Seattle, Saskatchewan. And so what we've really done after the pandemic in particular is leaned more into those groups to help them really get reignited and restarted, because you know, we weren't meeting in person.
For a few years there.
So we've now got about fifty of those community groups worldwide, and we hope to be able to and we're working on actually expanding them to more cities in places over you know this year and certainly into the future knew this year. Also are our Twitch Unity Guilds. This is sort of a hybrid so right now they're sort of North American based groups. They serve black women and latinae and Hispanic partners. They're supported by Twitch, so by us,
but they are led by members of those communities. They're just getting started. We actually recently had those Guilt leaders at our HQ in San Francisco, and that came from you know, our our partners and our streamers and community have told us, you know, we want to succeed here.
We love being showcased.
We love being promoted, you know, particularly during those sort of celebration months, Women's History Month, you know, Black History Month, et cetera.
But we also want that.
Support you around and you know, of course we as a as a company, as a marketing team are very disciplined and dedicated to showcasing diverse creators in every single campaign, but we also recognize their communities that have been underserved and creating a space for them programming to be able to enable their growth as well as enabling more collaboration, which is a real cornerstone of growth for any content creator,
particularly on Twitch. We believe it is going to make a really big difference for them as well.
So since Twitch obviously a big part of its business is catering to so many different kinds of creators and letting them, you know, foster their own specialized brands, what's the balance between granting this sense of independence to creators to go ahead and you know, deliver the kind of live streaming experience they want to versus the obvious need for moderation on the platform. How crucial do those things too? Things kind of combine, especially with regard to being your ad partners at play.
Yeah, it's a good question. I think it's multi part two.
So I think on the one hand, there's like a brand question there, which is and we had this sort of recognition a few years ago when we did our brand redesign, which is, look, we've long been associated with the color purple.
We still are.
We had you know, a word mark and we have a logo, and then we use purple quite prominently in most of our marketing.
Of course, we've created.
A much more flexible canvas in terms of and what you'll see now is like a lot more vibrancy, a lot more use of color across the spectrum. And that was really really specific in particular choice because we recognize, look, yes we are often marketing you know, Twitch, but more importantly and more frequently, we're actually marketing creators who are part of our you know, the Twitch community, and we need and want a really flexible canvas on which their
brands are also expressed. So you know, we've done actually even more work in that space from a brand perspective recently in terms of like, how do you make this even more kind of extensible so that when we are promoting you know, X y Z creator, whether it's in a campaign of lots of creators or it's a single a campaign that focuses on a single creator, that we're able to express the unique, very unique brands really easily
while also having that foundation of the Twitch brand. That kind of leads to the other part of your question, which is like safety. So it's quite personal, right what your feeling of safety and what your boundaries will be for your own channel are going to be quite different from.
You know, any other any other creators.
So the way that that works on Twitch is is is not dissimilar what I just described from a brand perspective, which is like, you know, we we have a floor of what we consider to be respectable acceptable behavior across any channel, whether you're in chat or you're a creator, and those are you know, the terms of service of course,
but also the community guidelines. I think one uh, you know thing about Twitch to know is we've you know, never positioned ourselves as a free speech platfor we have always said that we are you know, our rules exist to enable anyone to be able to build a community here, and that means you know, having certain rules in place against hate speech and harassment and.
You know what are appropriate. You know standards that we believe are universal.
Now that same idea of like flexibility extensibility exists, you know, with our posture to safety as well, because you can also as a creator, establish your own rules and norms for your community. So often when you join a Twitch channel, you will see if you try to chat, so you you know, click on the little chat box there, you'll see a pup up of these are the rules of this community that this creator has set, and they also
have mechanisms to enforce those rules. So again this is above and beyond what we provide as or we established as a service and enforce. The creators can also establish their own.
Norms.
It can even be like, you know, no backseat gaming, no cursing, lots of like, no racism, no hate, all of those things. They also have moderators on their channels
quite frequently who can help enforce those rules. They can ban people from the channels, they can put them in timeouts, all of those things, so that again they're cultivating the kind of community that they want on top of the rules that we have already established and an enforce, and those things you know are quite important to brands, right they want to make sure brands want to make sure, you know, I'm a brand leader myself, want to make
sure that they're associating with services that you know, and in places and surfaces where they feel resonate, you know,
with with their own brand values. And so certainly our investments in moderation and safety, in policies and the enforcement of those things are are very important to our brand partners, and we are always in discussions with them because we want it to be a great place for our creators and foremost, but that also means, you know, making it a great place where brands can come and support them.
We're going to take a break here, but when we're back with Rachel Delphin, we're going to get into a new service kick that is adding itself to some of the competition against Twitch, as well as get into more expansive areas of tech and media on the horizon that could potentially be something for Twitch to play into. We're back with strictly business and Rachel Delphin Twitch is chief marketing officer, So Rachel obviously really sturdy moderation is pretty
essential to running platforms with very large audiences smoothly. You know, we can look at Twitter since Elon Musk took over and made some changes there and sort of see the consequences of when moderation falls by the wayside. But regardless, you know, the prospect of looser moderation and the kind of creators that might prefer that is something that this new service kick is really taking advantage of by not having as strict moderation and also offering some higher revenue
splits too. You know, it already led to a former Twitch streamer EXQC, signing one hundred and million dollar deal
in June. So how can Twitch market itself towards creators, you know, from those two angles to ensure that you know, Twitch isn't going to lose too much of the competition and our sort of overall deals like that, you know, that's what we call them in the TV and film space generally, But are big deals like that's still a big part of Twitch's bottom line in locking certain very popular creators down.
I mean, I think there are a lot.
Of ways you can, you know, respond and act in a competitive environment. And I think, as you noted in an earlier conversation, had you know, we are the market leader in the live streaming space, and that's and that's you know, been true for many years. And that's because in many ways, you know, we built the category, and there's certainly been times in our history when we've been
a category of one, I think. And the reason why I think we've been able to you know, build but also maintain and grow this you know, this category that does has and has become appealing to other brands and companies over you know, the lifetime of our company is because we've remained really invested and focused entirely, you know, and that's you know, over the thirteen plus years of our existence in the success of the category, but also very specifically in the success of the creators who create
life content and the communities you know that build around them since that inception. So in no way does that suggest like we are complacent, right, having you know, built category and leading it. In many ways, it's that it's a very similar position during you know, times of more competition and times certainly a less competition. You know.
The way that we win and we continue to.
Attract the best creators, keep them there, attract more creators and the communities that love them and support them is to keep that focus right and remain committed to that mission. So, you know, if our service is the safest place to be a live content creator, to be the place where you can find and build and gather a thriving community, and to do so with the best options and ways
to monetize. You know, if that the latter thing is your thing, then that's that's how we'll win, regardless of you know, what's happening from a competitive standpoint.
Yeap, things like revenue splits are you know, one of the many things kind of swirling around the ongoing strikes that are happening in the Hollywood space with both the w GA and then SAG AFTERRA And another aspect of those strikes is you know, concern over implications for how generative AI and other AI tools can be used and employed throughout that industry. As a bit of a different business,
you know, oriented around live streaming. Does Twitch look to you know, increasing AI tech as something that can you know, benefit the actual business operations, whether it's towards more content or us more as like a proactive tool for moderation purposes.
My expectation is that we'll see adoption of like the generative AI that you that you've sort of been seeing by content creators probably in a few ways. One is the experience you actually have, right so, the content you see on the screen, whether it's sort of adopting it as as a v tuber of those kinds of things,
or generating different kinds of concept. I would love to speculate with you about how I think creators will use it, But to be honest, there is a reason why they are the content creators who are endlessly creative, and I am in the role that I am, so I suspect we'll see.
Some innovation and creativity there.
You've seen some of that around the Seinfeld inspired stream that happened earlier this year that attracted a lot of attention.
So I think we'll see some innovation.
And experimentation on the creator side certainly. And then from my perspective, I certainly think there is going to be an opportunity to implement and sort of integrate some AI tooling in our sort of like work stack and our processes on a lot of you know, the back end and the business and processes of marketing. That will make things a bit more efficient and you know, predictive, right in terms of like audience modeling and all kinds of
things that I think will be really useful. There's nothing right now, but I certainly I believe it's you know, this technology is here for the long term and that we'll see some really exciting tooling coming out of.
It in terms of the various kind of devices that Twitch can operate on, as Twitch looked to something like you know, like increasingly popular TikTok lives as something to take inspiration of or you know, try to improve on the mobile end of Twitch to you know, take advantage of increased interest in you know, the mobile aspect of live streaming in particular.
Yeah, it's a it's a great question and a timely one.
So at TwitchCon, actually, are you tired of me mentioning TwitchCon yet, we made two announcements in this area. So stories and feed these are very familiar formats for sure for anyone who has a phone, and the difference for how they will actually come to life and how they'll work is in how we're actually thinking about about them
and what the utility of those things are. So for Stories, for example, one of the challenges of live is that getting your community altogether when your live is tough, right, schedules have to line up people work, they go to school,
they have other commitments, et cetera. So the stories feature on Twitch gives creators a really reliable way to reach their whole community, you know, all at once, right the concurrent viewer numbers you see on Twitch, so on the channel page it will show you like how many people are watching right now. That is really the tip of the iceberg when it comes to what their whole community
looks like. For all the reasons I mentioned earlier that you know, it's really hard to see every single live broadcast right of a creator that you follow, and so stories we see is going to be a really great way to enable engagement while they're not live, to kind of catch people up what happened today on the stream, What were the memes, what were the jokes, what were the big high points, so that one year back, you know,
you feel like you feel like you never left. I think there's also utility, you know, for creators who are taking vacation but want to remain connected, that kind of thing. So that story's format is coming, I believe in October the Fall. And then the other thing we talked about was feed, So having a Discovery feed, which will be a personalized mix of clips within the brows tab on our mobile app, and it is you know, sort of
capturing and embracing that behavior. Right, you're scrolling you but you don't have a full thirty minutes, you don't have a full hour, which is more typical right of a Twitch session.
You're staying for a longer time. You want to hang out.
You're like pulling up a seat, you know, at the bar or whatever, and recognizing that there is a behavior, of course that exists. Lots of people are sort of checking in, they have these more snackable moments. The difference again is the express purpose of our feed is to discover new creators so that you'll get this personalized mix of clips. But our intention is then that you are going to ultimately join their live streams and enjoining their communities.
It's not our goal to have you or spend you know, hours of time actually scrolling the feed. What we want and what we want to do for creators and for community members is to help them discover new creators and then get them into the live experience where they can you know, actually start to build relationships community bonds.
Going back some years too, when Twitch was still known as you know, justin dot tv before it became an Amazon subsidiary, it was a service that very much had its roots in video games, and while it sins grown well beyond then, I believe you know, what's dubbed just chatting is you know, generally the most popular form of Twitch content versus any particular video game. But regardless, we're seeing in Hollywood, especially this year, a pretty huge embrace
of video gaming. IP. The Last of Us premiered on HBO in January and was an immediate hit for both HBO and what's now the Max streaming service. And then in April, Universal released Super Mario brother the Super Mario Brothers Movie, obviously in partnership with Nintendo and with the with their Illumination Animation studio, and that ended up grossing
well over a billion dollars. So, with video games clearly defining themselves as really lucrative IP in Hollywood this year, is that something that has a ripple effect over a Twitch and the kind of you know, ad pushes Twitch can help make with partners to you know, kind of bring everything back to all the excitement around gaming.
Yeah, it's really awesome to see.
I think it's you know, you maybe are you know, touching on this, but like there's always been this kind of weird distance between the game industry, which has been
massive for a very long time. I think right now it's like two hundred and fifty dollars billion dollar industry, And that's sort of like treatment or assumption of it of being like, oh, this is like a niche, niche thing that people do, when in fact it's it's actually extremely popular and there are these like massive ips and fandoms around them who show up, you know, for the things they care about, as you've seen with the Last
of Us and the Super Mario Brothers movie. So I definitely think that there's an opportunity for us as well because we are such an established home for gaming and trends in gaming and flouncers of gaming. So I think Last of Us is a good example. You know, when the series premiered, you see a lot of streamer is actually doing playthroughs of the Last of Us games and those kinds of things. And when Super Mario Brothers movie came out, we saw a real opportunity. There is a
day for Mario fans. It's called Mario Day. It's March tenth, m R one zero Mario very cute, and so we did a big campaign around it that really pulled in everyone who you know, was part of our creator community and likes you know, Mario, any of the ip and play the games, bake cookies with Mario, you know, play songs from you know, the the games. So it was this really big celebration, recognition, kind of community moment around
Mario Mario Day. But also you know, coincided with the release of the film as well, and again you see a real embrace by our community.
Of that as well.
Similarly, we did, uh this was not created you know, not related to Hollywood, but we did a super ultra combo week on Twitch and that was in early June, coinciding with.
The release of street Fighter six. Beloved games.
Street Fighter you know, fighting game community is a really big and historic community on Twitch, and so we did this long week that kind of led up to the to the ultimate launch of the street Fighter six game.
And from a brand perspective, we're getting a lot of sort of interest of like the way that it was done you know, both off Twitch but on Twitch and really gathered you know, what were literally thousands of creators creating content in the street uh street fighter, but also just fighting game category and that becomes really appealing to be a part.
Of something like that.
Well, thanks for taking the time to join us today, Rachel.
It was my pleasure.
That a conversation with Rachel Dalton, chief marketing Officer of Twitch. Come back next week for more discussion and insights into the ever evolving media and entertainment landscape.