Fox Advertising Launches Creators@Fox As Company Looks To Develop Talent And Broaden Revenue Horizons

As part of an ongoing push into the creator community, Fox Advertising has launched Creators@Fox, an effort to expand brand campaigns across linear and digital platforms.

The media company announced the launch Wednesday at CES in Las Vegas during a lunch event with advertisers and partners. Executives and talent took part in three short panels exploring the company’s strategy in more detail.

The ad conversations followed the announcement earlier in the day of Fox Entertainment’s launch of Fox Creator Studios. Chef Gordon Ramsay and popular YouTube baker Rosanna Pansino are among the creators to have come aboard FCS.

Creator talent from each of Fox’s four verticals (entertainment, sports, news and Tubi) is involved in the new setup. Along with Ramsay and Pansino from the entertainment area, news will be represented by podcast and digital-first talent from Fox News Media and Red Seat Ventures, with a collective reach to millions of viewers and listeners a month. Sports will take advantage of a new relationship with Barstool Sports, which is a major draw with Gen Z and millennial sports fans.

Free, ad-supported streaming outlet Tubi has been exploring the creator world for the past couple of years. Its audience of 100 million monthly active users has access to the 150-strong “Tubi Creatorverse,” whose roster includes Kinigra Deon, Jubilee, KevOnStage and Mythical.

Rich Bloom, Tubi’s GM of Creator Programs and EVP Business Development, joined KevOnStage (given name Kevin Fredericks) at CES to talk about the 6-month-old Creatorverse initiative.

“The idea behind it was we want to build a path to Hollywood for creators,” Bloom said. The media company aims to share its resources but not give copious notes or put up roadblocks. Instead, the goal is to “allow creators to maintain their authenticity, really keep the magic that makes them popular in the first place, and our default is that working with creators is a huge amount of freedom.”

Fredericks, who has 1 million YouTube subscribers and millions of followers across other platforms, said the process of reaching an agreement with Tubi was unlike his experiences pitching traditional studios.

“Usually, they buy your content, and they own it, you no longer own it,” he said. “You no longer have much say-so, if any at all. There’s no partnership.” On Tubi, where Fredericks is one of nearly a dozen creators (out of 150) whose work is exclusive to the platform for a period of time, work is screened but it generally goes live very shortly after that corporate review.

Bloom said Tubi’s mission is to “work with creators to elevate them” and give opportunities for more of their work to get produced. “Rather than deficit, finance it, we’re giving them funding, we’re giving them a delivery date, they’re going and making it, they’re delivering it, and they would be in an exclusive window for it,” he said.

Bloom and Fredericks did not talk specifically about sponsor integrations or work with specific advertisers, though those opportunities are certainly on the road map. Pansino, who has more than 20 million followers across all platforms, talked extensively about working with brands like Starbucks and the Angry Birds franchise, as well as helping create a line of Wilton cookware that was sold at Target, Walmart and other major retailers.

Julian Franco, president of strategy and operations at Fox Entertainment, saluted the progress that Pansino and her business partner had been able to make as a boutique outfit. Because creators are personal brand ambassadors and must devote hours a day to content creation, handling the business side of sponsor relationships is easier with a large-scale media company. “When you partner with somebody like Fox Advertising,” he said, “we’re able to do is deliver a full roster of integrations and possibilities.”

Jeff Collins, Fox’s head of advertising, marketing and brand partnerships, said teaming with creators “allows brands to plug into trusted communities and amplify their connection with the fandoms they want to reach organically and authentically.”

Communities and the creators they follow “are more important than ever before,” Collins told the room full of media buyers. They provide “places where consumers can come together and share passions, and just as important, you all have an opportunity to reach them.”