Influencing Media: Timothy Armoo, CEO of Fanbytes

Welcome to Part 3 of our Influencing Media series. In the wake of our inaugural MediaWrites event in September[1], we look back at the discussion, focusing this time on Timothy Armoo, co-founder and CEO of Fanbytes: a video distribution platform marketing to Generation Z through Snapchat...

0
1686

Generation Z

For those that are not familiar with this particular demographic, this is the generation that comes after millennials; the digital kids, the children of the internet age, and a market that brands are desperate to both reach and understand. Who better to provide that insight than the members of Generation Z themselves? Tim and his team have an average age of 21 with the youngest member being just 19 years old, putting Fanbytes in the unique position of being comprised of the audience that it is trying to capture.

What does Fanbytes do?

The big challenge for any marketing team is reaching and engaging their target audience. More challenging still is trying to figure out who that audience actually is. Fanbytes, with its exceptional understanding of Generation Z, tells brands who they should be marketing to and how they should be doing it. Snapchat (a mystery even to most millennials) is the platform of choice through which Fabytes distributes its clients’ videos, ensuring maximum engagement by targeting the right people at the right time.

Tips from Tim: did you know that if the person featured in a video looks directly into the camera in the first two seconds, that video will (on average) get three times more engagement.

How does Fanbytes ensure audience engagement? 

Fanbytes uses influencers to distribute its clients’ video content in their social media “stories”. This of itself is now fairly commonplace in brand advertising, but what gives Fanbytes the edge, is its algorithm that identifies which influencers are the most effective at advertising in a particular market. Fanbytes can therefore tell its clients – this is the guy you need to sell this product to these people – genius.

“The data, the data, the data.”

Apparently Tim’s quite keen on data. It’s absolutely central to understanding his audience and to show the success of his campaigns. “We’re constantly learning from our campaigns”, says Tim. With the wealth of data they have built up over time, Fanbytes has learnt exactly which audiences to target with different brand types to maximise engagement and completion rates. Naturally, Tim’s clients want evidence of their return on investment so Tim lets the figures speak for themselves, showing a clear edge over his competitors.

And the future of Fanbytes?

“What comes after Generation Z?” asked our chair Rebecca O’Kelly Gillard (senior IP associate at Bird & Bird). “Generation AA”, according to Tim. It seems our data driven society is now indeed identifying its generations like an excel spreadsheet…

Tim recognises that platforms change and therefore has been careful to keep Fanbytes “platform agnostic”. Should the kids start communicating using another channel, Fanbytes will be ready. With clients including Sony, Warner and Universal, Fanbytes has bagged the big names within a year of launching. If Fanbytes can persuade three key competitors to all buy in that quickly, it’s clearly offering something indispensable.

[1] A video of the full panel discussion from our event is available in our event report. Please also take a look at Part 1 and Part 2, which take a look at two of our other panellists.

 

Leave a Reply