Since 2010, WHOSAY has been pairing brands with influencers to help brands engage with audiences. When the company was ready to permanently link itself to a major media industry influencer, it engaged with Viacom.
“We always wanted to be able to participate with our services alongside the power of a television Upfront and the distribution that a major media company can offer. And we get to do that this year,” says WHOSAY Founder & CEO Steve Ellis.
In this interview with Beet.TV at Viacom’s Digital Content NewFronts 2018 event, Ellis talks about the steps needed to transcend clutter and reach people who spend so much of their time “on a six-inch screen.”
In January of 2018, Viacom disclosed that it had acquired WHOSAY, whose brand clients include McDonald’s, Coca-Cola and Macy’s. Viacom will use WHOSAY to help brands create campaigns that are consistent across digital platforms as well as TV, as The Wall Street Journal reports.
“We’ve worked with a lot of the same customers,” Ellis says of Viacom. “Now we get to combine that with the inventory that comes with a linear cable company and a digital company that provides so much content, so many views. Those two together we think is the combination that we did this deal for.”
These days, content providers not only need to cut through content clutter. So does their marketing, according to Ellis.
“Average marketing, uncreative marketing, is not good enough anymore. Nobody has to pay attention to what you have to say unless you do something different.”
WHOSAY works with “any kind of talent,” from Hollywood stars to “mommy bloggers and everything in between. You can’t get away with just hammering people with marketing messages that are not effective,” Ellis adds.
Over the past eight years, WHOSAY has “built up an enormous expertise of executing campaigns from scratch, for brand advertisers, where we would create the whole shoot, the content, video and imagery, and we would distribute that content to whoever the brand advertiser wanted us to reach.
“So it’s sort of like a campaign in a box, but always involving talent to help cut through the clutter and add creativity. Now we’re putting that same creative skills alongside the existing ones of Viacom, through Velocity, and combining that with the inventory we have and maximum flexibility for the client.”
This video is part of Beet.TV’s coverage of the Digital Content NewFronts 2018. The series a co-presentation of Beet.TV and the IAB. Please see additional videos from the series on this page.
