How Creators Can Turn Influence Into Equity | Creator Upload feat. Phil Ranta, CEO of Stealth Talent

0:00Phil Ranta:Welcome to Creator Upload, your Creator Economy podcast. I'm Joshua Cohen. And I'm Phil Ranta. Phil, you're not Lauren Schnipper. I'm not. Not this time, no. Only on Fridays. For Halloween? Yeah, for Halloween. Or just hitting the clubs, you know. One or both, for sure. You are filling in for Lauren Schnipper, who is at an undisclosed location and can't make it. For what now, the fourth time as a guest co-host on Creator Upload? Fourth time. Yeah, I believe it's now two times more than John Atkins, which I'm very proud of. As you should be, we should get some power rankings charts going. We'll have that for the future.

0:38Phil Ranta:But stoked to have you on. For those who do not know, and you should, Phil Ranta is an OG in the creator space, the online video ecosystem. He has held executive roles at Facebook Gaming Studio 71 and full screen. Phil, you're currently the CEO of the new creator representation company, Stealth Talent, which is helping to turn influence into equity for the creator economy. I want to talk to you about that at the end. But first, where are you calling from? You're at Creator IQ Connect. Yes, which is actually two blocks away from my house. So I'm back at my garage for this, but then I'm walking right over to do a panel.

1:15Phil Ranta:I really appreciate your dedication to be a co-host here. That's something Sean Atkins would never do. Yeah, he'd make an intern drive him in a golf cart back. Yeah, something like that. But tell me, so tell me about the conference and what have you learned? Yeah, Creator IQ Connect is one of those rare conferences where everybody in the room is a spender. You know, it's what every other conference wants, you know, or conference attendee wants. So everybody is, I mean, heavily beauty fashion lifestyle, a lot of family stuff there. Day one is just full of swag giveaways. My book bag and a full another bag was full of stuff, mostly for my wife and kids, It's not a lot of stuff for the dudes, but and everybody's just trying to crack this creator economy code.

1:53Almost everyone has the same problem, which is I'm buying against creators. I don't know if it's optimized. Somebody please help me. And creator IQ has got a great suite of tools for that. But also me as being the talent guy in the room, it was just a nonstop buffet of brand deals.

2:08Phil Ranta:That's really amazing. I mean, there's very few other locations and situations like that. Like you said, that you would be surrounded by brands and advertisers. I mean, maybe Cannes is number one on the list, but is this a close second? You tell me. I would think so. I mean, the good thing about this one is Cannes feels like it's full of really high-level people having really high-level conversations. These are frontline sellers at this one. I would say the average age in the room is probably 25. So you can really get into the nitty-gritty in terms of the people that are actually controlling the ad spend.

2:39That sounds like a great event to be at.

2:41Phil Ranta:And Creator IQ is one of the few huge influencer marketing agencies that hasn't been picked up by a media holding company yet. Captivate, one of its competitors, an influential. Another one of its competitors were picked up by a publicist group. Leaders was bought by Stagwell. Maven was bought by Later. BR Media Group was also bought by a publicist group recently. So one of the just few remaining big independents in this influencer marketing ecosystem. Give it a year. with so much M &A going on. I never want to say, oh, that one hasn't gotten bought yet because by the time this episode drops, we might see an announcement.

3:19Who knows?

3:20Phil Ranta:And were you just hanging out deal-making? Did you catch any interesting panels? What's the vibe going on? What are people talking about? Yeah, I mean, everyone's talking about AI. I would say that a lot of people are still pretty Pollyanna-ish about it where they're like, it's a tool and it's going to be helpful. And, but like, I think that everybody still doesn't realize what this is about to do to the industry. But, and then just a lot of talk about more interesting analytics that are going to happen through AI, like being able to be more full funnel, being able to collate bigger tranches of information.

3:54So a lot of excitement and a lot of people, I think, that are going to be completely hit by a Mac truck the second AI really starts to take hold.

4:02Phil Ranta:that's really interesting so there's this I think mostly doublespeak going on with people where they're afraid the sky is falling but while the sky is falling they're like oh my god I can get a lot done yes exactly and that's kind of how I am right the sky is falling but I'm getting five times as much done in a day that I was a year ago according to my Asana so I can't hate on AI for everything but I can hate on AI's like poetry AI poetry's bad so have you been playing around with Sora at all? way too much. It's scary. I think it's scary, but I also understand that it's not static in its current form.

4:40Phil Ranta:It's going to evolve. Right now, though, I feel like it's much more fun to create these memes than to share them or watch them. And I think it's kind of like dreams. You're really interested in telling other people your dreams, but then it's not really that interesting to hear about people talking about their dreams. I feel like it's the same way for these lots of these ai creations and i get the feeling that and i wonder now i'm of this mind where will it ever be good enough where i could look through a total ai feed and be as compelled as i am with looking through whatever tiktok youtube shorts or instagram reels is today i think you might already be and you just don't know it yet for real you think so Yeah, there was like Hank Green put up an awesome TikTok today, yesterday, sometime recently about this woman who was climbing Mount Everest with her dog and documenting the whole thing.

5:37And the dog died. She had to bury it in the snow. She's not actually a real person, not climbing Mount Everest. Dog didn't die. Got 30 million views. And the comments were all, oh, my God, this is so sad. Or why would you put this on this horrific AI top to bottom? And clearly a lot of people are being fooled. so fascinating i don't know like i'm against the premise of sora because being a deep fake machine is going to add a lot of negative things to the world right it's going to cause emotional manipulation manipulation around events that don't actually happen and i don't like that and a lot of instances of bullying which is already happening it's just happening with celebrities so no one cares but as soon as it's like a rival girl in high school it starts getting really dark.

6:19But you're right. As silly memes about JFK rapping, sure. Why not?

6:26Phil Ranta:So maybe it's already happening and I just don't know. And we could talk about this all day, but there's some news in our industry that I want to jump into. So Phil, I feel like television and creators are having a moment. And that's exemplified by a couple of recent stories. The first comes from the launch of this new company called Gaggle, G-A-G-G-L. It's a London-based startup that was founded in February 2024 by former Twitch and TV execs, and it lets streamers broadcast episodes of shows like The Price is Right, Family Feud, Supermarket Sweep, Deadliest Catch, Baby Animals, Gordon Ramsay's F-Word, Taskmaster, Baggage, and Whose Line Is It Anyway to their audiences.

7:06Phil Ranta:Why is this an interesting thing? Because streamers are constantly looking for content. and they want to be able to have content that they can make money off of, that they're not going to get copyright claimed against, and that their audience is going to like. An easy way for streamers to figure out what content to put on their stream is if they can just watch something along with their stream and comment on it periodically. I think that's exactly right. The downside, because these streamers, especially if you're streaming for multiple hours a day, you're just looking for whatever you can to fill in those hours and make them compelling.

7:45Phil Ranta:And it's not easy to talk to your chat for eight hours a day. That's why streaming started basically with gaming because you could game for eight hours a day and that was compelling content for your chat and you can interact with them in certain capacities. But mainly it was focused on the game and you didn't have to come up with lots of material to put in this day's worth of streaming. For people who don't game, another easy way to do that is to watch other people's content. That's been a problem in the past. One, because sometimes chat doesn't like it and they think you're stealing other people's content.

8:18Phil Ranta:There's been certain arguments and the meta around this has not always been great because these creators sometimes will get hit with complaints that they're not being additive to the program. They're basically just stealing this content and putting it on their own platform and distributing it out to their own subscribers. Also, many times the rights holders don't love it because they're not getting proper recognition. They're not making any money from the deal. I think savvy ones might really dig it. But traditionally, the rights holders of this television IP want to control those rights and keep it as confined as possible and make money at every opportunity they can.

9:00Phil Ranta:I think Gaggle has come around and created a really interesting concept where they are letting creators use this IP from these different television shows that I named before, and they're paying creators to show it. Because now I think the thought process has shifted where instead of these rights holders trying to hold on to everything as tightly as possible and only distribute it in ways which they're getting paid, realize that this can be a great distribution mechanism for them. And they can get a lot more eyeballs on their IP through working with Twitch streamers and even paying them to watch their content, where I think even like a couple of years ago, they would try to get their lawyers on all of these people that were watching their shows.

9:45Yeah. I mean, look, this co-watching experience is about a story as old as the internet, right? What was Ray William Johnson, but somebody who was doing gaggle for virals, right? He was the number one YouTuber in the world. Phil DeFranco, react, right? What's interesting about this one is, first of all, other people have tried this, like caffeine when it was first launch was essentially like any streamer can stream sports games and comment over it and like that was the original premise until it kind of moved hard into um i don't even know what it moved hard into it moved hard to like kind of culture streaming um but what i think is really interesting about this is it has gotten exceptionally competitive to stream exceptionally long periods of time mafia thon has moved that forward and um that was streamer thon or a prom prom streamer prom there we go screamer prom all of these events are all about kind of 10 hours 12 hours three days one month you can't do that without having kind of a constant feed of entertainment and the way that people have tried to feed that in is like games or have other people jump in or twitch extensions that allowed people to hang in there for just a little while longer while they went to the bathroom this is at the very least solves the problem of not feeling alone which is why so many people watch live programming is because it's programming that you can talk back to.

11:06Totally. So it just like keeps you from having that endless void of silence in your brain and it makes it so you're participating in something. And it doesn't put so much pressure on the streamer to completely burn out by screaming to the microphone for eight straight hours. So I think it's a win. I just really hope the catalogs improve because when I saw Gaggle's initial catalog, I was like, yeah, well, then so the price is right. cool would be great as like nfl licenses or like during the uh not to bring up a dark period of time but during january 6th everybody on twitch was streaming videos from january 6th news coverage while commenting over it that kind of stuff makes for really compelling new content yes and i hope that they kind of get that more new news stuff so that we can start seeing some interesting commentary.

11:52Phil Ranta:Yeah, just to dive into some of the specifics here, the feature on Gaggle is called Reward Mode, which lets these streamers monetize these broadcasts. And it recently tested this mode with the show Supermarket Sweep, partnering with the show's owner Fremantle and Cash App to run a campaign with integrated ads and a giveaway for viewers. From September 24th through the end of October, over 100 Twitch streamers, including Extra Emily, Alex Botez, and Olivia Monroe, so big Twitch streamers, are earning ad revenue while streaming Supermarket Sweep to their viewers. So you can guess the prices of a can of corn from 20 years ago.

12:24I love it.

12:25Phil Ranta:Greg Miel told TubeFilter Us for this story, quote, the appeal to brands is that we have a large audience that engages with shows up to seven times more than the creator's other streams, he says. The combination of high engagement with a huge audience in their hard-to-reach target demographic is very attractive to brands. So apparently streamers are getting great viewership on this too as compared to their normal kind of average let's chat several hours. I believe it. Most streamers are boring. And this gives, I mean, it really is true. Like the reason why people watch gaming is because people get boring after a while.

12:59There's a reason why dates don't last eight hours. They last an hour or two because people can be entertaining for an hour or two. So yeah, give them a little dopamine, supermarket sweep, have them chase around and grab big inflatable hot dogs, win some money.

13:12Phil Ranta:And another Gaggle co-founder Adam Harris said, quote, creators are looking for compelling content, engaged audiences and ways to get paid. with gaggle we designed a platform that delivers on those needs while driving measurable roi for our brand and advertiser partners early beta results confirmed that this model works for both sides of the equation i love it i think it's innovative i think it shows the direction in which just thoughts around ip are headed in this newfangled creator economy and new just hollywood ecosystem i'm just excited for the ouroboros that will be bringing in twitch streams and then have people bring it into gaggle so they can comment over the Twitch streams.

13:50Phil Ranta:That'd be great. That'd be great. It's a snake eating its own tail. And then also what's going on in the television and creator world is this is coming out of MIPCOM, which is a big television buying conference that's happening in Cannes, France this week, where Bonnie J, which is a huge French production company, they own Fremantle, for instance, and other shows like Masterchef, Big Brother, Deal or No Deal, and Survivor. And the Paris-based company is kicking off its entertainment creators lab in its home country by reimagining these game shows like Minute to Win It and local favorites like Premier Compagnie.

14:29Phil Ranta:I hope I pronounced that right. Lauren's cringing whenever she hears this. Basically, it's taking this IP that it has from Fremantle and all these other production companies, both game shows and other types of programming, and reimagining that with creators. So it's choosing creators for this content lab. Each will receive 50 ,000 euros to kickstart the development of their pilots. Bonnie's JCO Marco Bassett said this at MIPCOM, quote, for us, it's an opportunity to test, to launch, and maybe to scale up in the future some of our dormant IP because we have a huge dormant catalog of formats or maybe to launch a new show.

15:05Phil Ranta:So creators get the benefit of working with this established IP and they get content too. And some endorsement that they were like, tacit endorsement at least, I think from the ecosystem that they were good enough to be given the opportunity to use this IP from a company like Bonnie J for the future. and then Bonnie J gets an opportunity where if one of these pops I mean if a game show hasn't been on for 20 years and then the creator makes a new version of that and it pops I could totally see one just more creator versions of that localized around the world but also it even heading to television or something more yeah it's a win win win win win right in the same way that ABC has just been reigniting every past game show format and oddly enough every single one works whether it's from the 50s all the way through, because great games are great games, why not have creators play them too?

16:03Like you can do smaller versions of Jeopardy, Wheel of Fortune, Let's Make a Deal. It's all like, as long as you can right size it to something a creator can do capably, game shows are fun. They're dopamine machines. You like lose yourself in the competition of it. So I think that it's super smart. What I'm really, really excited for of this is when brands start coming in and using these formats as ways to give away awesome prizes to up-level the brand. Like if I was a cruise line or something like that, to be able to say, great, instead of just doing a shout-out and say this is brought to you by Carnival Cruises, play a little game of Wheel of Fortune and the winner gets a Carnival Cruise.

16:39Phil Ranta:I mean, I know the last time you watched Jeopardy or Wheel of Fortune, but they're a staple in my house now because we watch linear television. And at 7 p.m. on CBS, Jeopardy comes on. And at 7.30 p.m. on CBS, Wheel of Fortune comes on. and the state of Florida is going hard on promo on both of those game shows right now. That demographic fit is perfect. Totally perfect. And I will say my kids, my eight-year-old and 10-year-old, we watch it all together. And it is this really interesting, cross-generational, compelling experience that I think isn't replicated in lots of other forms of media and entertainment, but we all love it.

17:26Phil Ranta:And I think we all love it for like the same, but slightly different reasons. It just is so, like you said, it's so compelling watching a game. You feel like it's game night at home. Right. It's sports, right? It's you get someone to cheer for. Oh, I don't like that person. I do like that person. Well, that person's really smart. Wow. That person's really dumb. Like it's, it's at its basest form. It's just like the same kind of sports. we've all been playing since we were in the Fertile Crescent. Were we playing in the Fertile Crescent? I know Mayans were playing lacrosse. That's true. They were playing the game with the heads or the sheep's bladders full of things.

18:00Phil Ranta:Totally. But yeah, I think that there were ball games from the beginning of time. At the very least, I'm sure cavemen were playing tag, right? Something like that, for sure. Something like that. Moving on to another just related story, I want to talk about clipping. So for those of you who don't know, Phil, you described it as the best slash worst kept secret in our industry. And it is basically this idea where a rights holder, whether it's a creator, a brand, a podcast, a television studio, a movie, or whatever, will have some piece of long-form video content. that they then go to this clipping company and they say, hey, I want you, this clipping company, to cut up my IP into short form, viral snackable snippets and distribute it all over the place because I want to get as many views on my IP as possible.

18:54Phil Ranta:So then the clipping company will farm this out to just throngs of clippers. I'm assuming it's just a bunch of young kids who are really savvy at the internet and great at editing. and the clipping company will pay those clippers based on the amount of views that their clips get on these platforms. Real quick on the logistics of how this works, some IP owner has a budget for marketing, comes to a clipping company, says, hey, take my IP, get as many views on it as possible. The clipping company then farms it out to these clippers and says, hey, we'll pay you some kind of CPM. Generally, that's anywhere from like a thousand bucks for a million views to three thousand bucks for a million views or more.

19:38Phil Ranta:And then it's off to the races. That's absolutely true. And in the past, most have gone through this one platform called WAP. And in WAP, you essentially go on, you put in this thing, a bunch of clippers go after it. They win it as a bounty. The problem with that is exactly what you said. You have no clue who these clippers are and you have no control or what platforms they are. So it's heavily probably young people, probably in Southeast Asia somewhere or the Middle East or Sub-Saharan Africa or Northern Europe or something, just putting it on every meme page and everything they possibly can to get as many views as possible so they get a few bucks.

20:16Phil Ranta:Totally. And now there's been more clipping companies that have evolved because people realize that this is a really great way for the marketing and distribution of content. Basically, the algorithms allowed this to happen in that short form video platforms like Instagram Reels and TikTok made the decision that it doesn't matter how many followers you have or how many subscribers you have or how many views your last video got. Any given video you have that you upload can go viral. So it creates an opportunity for these individuals to create a bunch of different accounts upload a bunch of these videos and odds are one of them's going to hit.

21:00Especially in short form algorithms, right? Because you don't care, right? Like on YouTube Shorts now, they actually allow you to link to a long form episode for it. They're acknowledging that cut downs are a thing and a marketing way, a way to market a longer form piece of content. It's encouraged.

21:19Phil Ranta:So a bunch of these other companies have evolved. One is called Clip.Tech by Lamontia Warren. Another one is Clipping by Anthony Fujiwara. And the most recent entrant into this fray is Mr. Beast himself, a.k.a. Jimmy Donaldson, who recently launched the clipping company Vyro, V-Y-R-O. Why is it called Vyro? I think because it sounds like... Viral. Let's make it go Vyro. Yeah. And he's the latest entrant into this clipping fray, which one, makes me think that this is definitely working for creators, or else why would he be involved? and two, that we're about to see it be used by way more people than have used it in the past because Jimmy Donaldson, I think, is going to be able to bring a much bigger spotlight to this and intrigue many other individuals who maybe didn't know what clipping was or haven't heard of it before.

22:11Phil Ranta:I think they will start to and they'll test it out and engage with it, which I think once it works for them, will lead to just a lot more investment in this. Yeah, and the reason why I say it's the best, worst-kept secret is because a lot of people who don't listen to the Joe Rogan show has seen Joe Rogan. Why? Because of his clips. A lot of people who have never seen a full Matt Rife special, they've seen him all over TikTok. Why? Because people are clipping his content and putting up the funniest moments. In fact, I would argue most stand-up comedians that are big on TikTok for stand-up clips, it's not on their own channel.

22:44That's very rare. A lot of people are getting their full sets or they're doing the comedy store and putting up 30 minutes and saying clip the heck out of this. There'll be 50 clips then put up and one or two of them will pop. And suddenly that set got you 100 million views.