As a production and talent partner for brands and creators, Amplify knows a thing or two about building audiences online and offline. They manage a slew of popular Aussie creators including Millie Ford, Starr McGowan, Indy Clinton, Jack Cooper, and sister-duo Georgia and Lily Grace, just to name a few – as well as TikTok Creator of the Year Kat Clark.
Mediaweek spoke with Tom Maynard, co-founder and director, and Sonja Stindl, head of talent at Amplify, about the creator economy and what they look for when they work with creators.
For those not working closely with the creator economy in Australia, it can seem like a space that’s evolving so rapidly that it’s hard to keep up, however, Maynard says that the space really took off in the late 2000s.
Maynard: “It is definitely rapidly moving, but it feels like a lifetime that I’ve been involved in it! In my opinion, it really first started when YouTube came to prominence around 2008 to 2009, all these YouTubers started to build audiences.
“The evolution has seen a lot more money and a lot more audience roll in and subscribe, follow, interact, and engage with the creators themselves. There’s been a huge amount of change, and it’s only going to continue to change over the next decade or two.”
One of the biggest strengths of Amplify is helping creators expand their reach beyond the original social platform they started out on. A prime example comes from TikTok Creator of the Year Kat Clark and her daughter Latisha Clark – who have a combined total of over 5.7 million followers – who Amplify helped elevate from TikTok, to their podcast Basically Besties, to a live tour with the podcast.
When considering which creators to work with, there is one major thing that the team looks out for.
Stindl: “With Amplify, when we are signing talent, one thing we look for is a strong community – you can have 200,000 followers with a strong community, or you could have millions. It’s about harnessing that relationship with the audience, to then be able to move an audience over from TikTok to a podcast, to then move on from a podcast to a live show, to merch, and all these other avenues.
“Without that relationship, and without that audience connection, the numbers don’t really mean anything. You could have a million followers, but no connection with your audience means you’re not going to be able to move them anywhere.”
Maynard: “Having a passionate audience is critical. Audiences are not necessarily waking up in the morning and putting in a URL or a .com, they’re opening up their feed, wherever that may be, and interacting with the creators. We look at these creators as their own media entities unto themselves, so at the heart of what they have is their community and their brand.”
Long gone are the days when a social media strategy involved putting the same perfectly polished post up across multiple platforms. People can see through anybody trying to pretend to be someone they’re not, and Stindl says that a lack of authenticity is one of the biggest hurdles that creators will face when growing their brand.
Stindl: “It’s such a buzzword, and everyone uses it all the time, but I feel that authenticity is super important. The creators being themselves and building that authentic relationship with the audience is what’s valuable.
“We make sure everything goes back to whatever their brand is – any brand partnership that they do are authentic, it goes back to like their overall brand. Yes, you can make heaps of quick dollars and be super transactional, and that creator’s lifespan will probably burn out just as quickly as it started. We help guide the creator in making every decision that makes sense for them, and that’s going to feed into that overall bigger-picture goal.”
As for what the rest of the year holds, Maynard says that the Amplfiy team will have their work cut out for them in 2023.
Maynard: “We are really broken up into three business units, but they all work fluidly with each other. We’re producing a lot of content – we’re managing Flybuys and Tinder’s TikTok accounts. We’re really focusing on helping brands move over into the TikTok space as a huge opportunity.
“In audio and podcasting, we have a whole bunch of Spotify original podcasts, and Kat Clarke’s podcast Basically Besties is going from strength to strength. In terms of creators and who we’re working with, our roster just continues to grow. We probably have about 40 of Australia’s biggest creators on our books.
“Thirdly is the campaigns side of the business, Amplify Activate. Influencer marketing is still exploding and just getting bigger and bigger, so when a brand wants to activate or promote a product on social, they’ll come to us and we will work with a whole bunch of creators to promote that particular product.
“All three of those areas are growing, and we’re moving into Southeast Asia quite aggressively too – we’ve employed about 30 people across Southeast Asia in the last 12 months.”
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See Also: Tom Maynard, Sonja Stindl