Providing Deep Insight Into Global Youth Audiences: Lucia Brawley and Derrick Ashong Present AMP Global

Interview with Lucia Brawley and Derrick Ashong, Founders and Partners at AMP Global

Where did the idea for your company come from and what was the need?

Ashong: When I was in graduate school, I was researching the future of the media industry and I realized that there were some big gaps in how artists were compensated, and how value was assigned. I also realized that the audience was the most critical factor for success but was being ignored in terms of the rewards and benefits of that success. That is one thing. My initial research got me pulled out of my PhD and into industry and I wound up working with a lot of luminaries in the space. I consulted for big companies like Visa, Nokia, and MySpace when it was around. I got the opportunity to work for big names in the industry, a couple of hundred million-plus selling record producers. I got to work with Oprah and Steven Spielberg, and big companies like BET, Aljazeera, ABC Disney, and Univision. Ultimately, I realized that we were doing all this stuff in the media, but we do not know who is watching. Everybody had guesstimates about what it means to have ratings but no real direct relationship with the end consumer of their content. Those things merged into an understanding that we do not know who is watching, and secondly, nobody is paying enough attention to reward and elevate the consumer for the value that they bring to the table. That was the general issue that made us realize that there was a huge opportunity to speak directly to the consumer, to value them for their behavior and engagement and to draw them into a rewarding experience. Here is an anecdote. I fly everywhere and earn miles on Emirates, I stay at a certain place and get my benefits for always staying at the same spot, or if I go to the same coffee shop for ten days in a row, I get a free coffee at the end of the two weeks. But if I’m the biggest fan of Wonder Woman or Ironman, of Rihanna or the biggest Lady Gaga fan, what do I get? Nothing. There is a huge opportunity to take these fans and reward them for their behavior that drives the industry. That is the core problem that we solved.

How does this machine work?

When you think of the future of digital media, most people look at the established big companies and the established ways of doing things. We believe there is going to be a completely different ecosystem where the consumer demands to be respected, and they demand to get something out of it.

Brawley: The way we look at it is we reach, retain and understand global youth audiences and we reach them with award-winning content. We have a couple of Emmy nods, and gold and silver Telly Awards opposite HBO, Netflix and Disney. We retain them with interactivity that includes social features, gamification with points and levels, and also with rewards including blockchain currency and other ways we can remunerate and reward fans for creating the value chain that is culture. And as we gain more users and are able to track granular audience consumption habits and consumer data with analytics, we can provide that information to brands and media companies to help them better understand global youth audiences. If you look at ecommerce, you have Amazon and Sephora that are online tracking every consumer. They know everything about that consumer such as their age, their race, their location, how many times a month they buy lipstick, and what color lipstick they like. In other words, the most granular data. If you go to media companies, or brand marketers who are using content marketing, they know nothing about their audience. So, what we do is provide media companies and brand marketers with information on how they can reach, retain and understand global youth audiences.

Ashong: The tactical way we do it is through platforms. It is a video on demand service, but it has high-quality content with the full interactivity of social media. And rather than appealing to a general market, we focus exclusively on global youth audiences. People who want to see great content that is designed for them and that crosses geographic and cultural barriers. We think of content that has global resonance and local relevance. That platform then gives you a wonderful social experience around great content, and the gamification features and data analytics etc. are built into the platform. The beauty is we do not scrape the data off and sell it to partners and advertisers because the consumer decides where they want to share the data and with whom. So, if you are a brand or advertiser offering a reward to a consumer, and the consumer likes the reward and wants to engage with your brand, they can then choose to get that discount, or that coupon or whatever it is that is on offer using a digital currency, and by doing that they agree to share their data so they can get their reward. It is a fan-centered model for protecting user privacy while embracing and expanding the reward ecosystem for the consumer’s consumption of content.

Is yours the only business offering this kind of service?

Ashong: There are a lot of different programs that are designed to be reward programs, but there are no really strong reward programs for media. In the past, there have been fan clubs and all kinds of different things to try to harness the power of fans who really love something. The record industry had street teams that would go out and spread the word with stickers and flyers and that would promote albums, events etc. But to really create a system that is universal and that has a streamlined reward engine that can work for any kind of brand, advertiser, content owner, and content genre, that has not been mastered by anyone so far. We see the competition as the really big social media platforms that have lots of interactivity but very poor content. Then there are video on demand services that have amazing content but very limited interactivity. By merging the two, we give a unique experience for the end user and that experience gives them a chance to build loyalty with creators, with advertisers and with each other.

Can you give an example of a brand that wanted to create an experience with the end user?

Ashong: That is how we started, but now the play is to build a distribution engine, a platform, and go directly to the audience. Our core partners right now are the Multimedia Group in Ghana, Megelectrics in Nigeria, KTN in Kenya and MBC in Mauritius. We are working directly with the broadcasters that want to reach audiences and we collaboratively speak to different brands in different territories. We are able to work with different kinds of brands, but we focus on distribution partners first because that guarantees the reach. We guarantee the quality of the content that they reach the audience with and then our technology makes the entire experience interactive and rewarding for the audience.

What is your strategy to be the preferred platform for global networks?

Ashong: The best way to think about it is that it is a B2B2C strategy, and we have phases. Phase 1 is to build the distribution relationships and that is going quite well. With the launch of our Mic Africa flagship series, we now reach more than 20 countries, and that took less than a year. In 2022, we will be expanding to a number of other territories across Africa and beyond the continent. We are already reaching and driving a lot of engagement from the audience, and we are seeing what they care about, what they believe in and what they feel works for them in engaging with this content and engaging with one another and being rewarded for that engagement. What is happening now is we are quantifying and scaling it to a lot of markets where there are young people who are hungry for great content, hungry to be recognized in their own right and to be participants, not just products of social media platforms that monetize their data without giving them anything in return.

What are the main projects you are currently working on?

Brawley: We are completing Season 2 of the Mic Africa series. At the beginning of November, we did something very ambitious by officially launching our app with all of its social features, watch parties, chats, digital wallet and so on, and at the same time we launched the first ever TBTM interactive festival. It was across music, tech, media, sustainability and fashion and we had some amazing celebrities involved in it like Deepak Chopra. We had major stars from the United States like Mustafa Shakir and Baratunde Thurston. It launched on our app, so people were able to use the features and enjoy the festival at the same time. The festival culminated in Season 2 of the Mic Africa series. That season ends on December 19th on TakeBactheMic.com and it is also available on some local television stations across the continent. We still have Nigeria and Senegal left in the next episode and we will have the road to the finale and the finale itself when we find out who wins.

What is your vision and what do you want to achieve in the medium-term?

Ashong: We basically built the first studio built on blockchain, that much has already been accomplished. And by studio, we mean not only the content, but the infrastructure to engage with and be rewarded with that content. There are three pillars to what we do. There is the distribution component, that is how people access content. There is the actual reward mechanism, that is the compatible digital currency that enables you to have a universal blockchain-based rewards program. And then there is another element that is related to the tokenization of content. You will see it manifest in 2022. What it does is it enables us to refine and streamline how creators and consumers are compensated for engaging with this wonderful content. We think that in three years we will have built an industry standard for rewarding consumers and compensating creators with transparent payments for engaging with content. That is where we see this going. When you think of the future of digital media, most people look at the established big companies and the established ways of doing things. We believe there is going to be a completely different ecosystem where the consumer demands to be respected, and they demand to get something out of it. They do not want to just be a product; they want to be a participant and we are specialized in that regard. We think that we can be a market leader for the future of how people think about media and digital assets.

What drives you to do what you do, and what is your inspiration?

Brawley: I was a ballet dancer and an actress. I got to work in Hollywood, New York and all over Europe. I got to work with Oliver Stone, and that was an amazing experience. Then I started volunteering with kids using arts and education and found it to be a very powerful tool for the upliftment of youth. That started to become my driving force in life and now with children myself, I believe that combining culture and creativity is the way we can create the future we want to see. That is what drives me every day to create a platform for youth around the world so they can use creativity to express themselves, to make the world they want to see, to change their destiny and the destinies of their families, their communities, and the world collectively.

Ashong: I believe that there is a kind of shift that is happening worldwide where people are starting to get tired of their reality and of the culture being defined by certain specific areas, cultures, regions. They want to see for themselves. You can see it already online, you can see it in real life, you can see it with the millennial and Gen Z generations in particular. They want to be heard. I am motivated by looking at a generation that has for the first time in human history the talent, the technology and the power to literally take back the mic and speak for itself. That is my focus. That is what we do. It is the core of our mission and so far, so good.

For more information, please visit: https://takebackthemic.com.

FAIR USE POLICY
This material (including media content) may not be published, broadcasted, rewritten, or redistributed. However, linking directly to the page (including the source, i.e. Marcopolis.net) is permitted and encouraged.