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'Chucky' and 'Jurassic World' Are Using This Santa Monica-Based Platform to Tap Fans for Art and Ideas
Kristin Snyder
Kristin Snyder is dot.LA's 2022/23 Editorial Fellow. She previously interned with Tiger Oak Media and led the arts section for UCLA's Daily Bruin.
As a kid, Jeff Blackman loved to see the animated artwork that would air between shows on networks like MTV and Nickelodeon.
Now, as the senior vice president of creative, entertainment cable creative & marketing in NBCUniversal’s Television and Streaming Department, Blackman wants to make his own networks just as visually engaging. And he wants fans to be part of the creative team.
So far, they’ve delivered. Ahead of the second season of “Chucky,” a series that follows the character from the “Child’s Play” franchise, NBCUniversal’s cable channel SYFY tapped the film’s fans to make episodic posters for the show. Eight different artists received $2,000 for their work, which resulted in anime-esque reimaginings of the doll and a Christmas-themed animation.
“We had this idea that, if we're going to turn the brand of SYFY over to the fans, we would want them to create the experience on the TV channel—which, traditionally, only the people that make shows get to make the TV channel,” Blackman says.
To find enthusiastic artists, NBCUniversal turned to Tongal, a Santa Monica-based content creation platform. The way it works is simple. Artists use the platform to showcase their work and market themselves to people looking to hire creatives. Alternatively, companies provide information about specific projects, such as what fanbase they are looking for and digital size requirements. After reviewing artist submissions, the companies greenlight which artists will get funding to complete the project.
For founder and CEO James DeJulio, Tongal was born out of the frustration of seeing talented people be shut out of the entertainment industry, which is notoriously difficult to break into.
“I really wanted to build a system where creative people could begin to unlock their potential and where they would find the opportunity to work with people like [Blackman], who believed in them and who desperately needed to find a way to get closer to creators and their audience,” DeJulio says.
Tongal and NBCUniversal’s partnership has since expanded beyond logo art. For “Jurassic World Dominion,” fans were encouraged to animate dinosaurs in the modern world. The 35 year anniversary of “Back to the Future” was celebrated with people recreating their favorite scenes.
But the process can also get more in-depth. When SYFY wanted to make a documentary about the comic book writer Todd McFarlane, they offered artists on Tongal a budget ranging from $80,000 to $120,000. They also helped those artists coordinate large filming locations. In one case the artists filmed at San Diego Comic-Con and were granted access to McFarlane’s personal archive.
The idea for Blackman is to use Tongal’s network to find creators who have extensive knowledge of the comic book world instead of hiring from a more traditional pool of applicants.
“We need somebody who knows that stuff, maybe has some relationships and prior work in there and then can bring something interesting to the visual storytelling,” Blackman says.
While some companies, like Marvel, have been vocally hesitant to bring fans into their process, claiming that they are too attached to the original plotlines, others have embraced them. Last year, Lucasfilm hired a “Star Wars” fan who had previously made Luke Skywalker deepfakes to work on de-aging and facial visual effects.
For its part, SYFY wants to work with people who are passionate about their intellectual property. According to Blackman, doing so solves two problems: the company doesn’t have to spend time explaining the show to people who are unfamiliar with the universe, and it helps them feature a wide range of skill sets and artistic styles.
“This lets us go really deep with these subsets of fans and audiences and lets them go even deeper on their engagement with the show,” Blackman says.
From DeJulio’s perspective, that level of fan engagement is going to be the key to television marketing. He believes marketing methods that don’t actively engage fans are no longer an effective, long-term marketing model. Instead, bringing in people who want to channel their passion for a show into a creative outlet can become an active part of the marketing process.
“I think, in the future, there's no way for a show or movie to not get really close to the fan base,” DeJulio says. “The idea of that something just gets created in an ivory tower and then launched out into the world—I don't know if that's the long-term marketing model for entertainment.”
Kristin Snyder
Kristin Snyder is dot.LA's 2022/23 Editorial Fellow. She previously interned with Tiger Oak Media and led the arts section for UCLA's Daily Bruin.
https://twitter.com/ksnyder_db
Santa Monica Is Using the Metaverse to Gamify Its Shopping District
04:04 PM | December 13, 2021
Last week, the app FlickPlay announced it was partnering with Santa Monica (which is where the company is based) so that it would become the first U.S. city to have access to the metaverse through its app.
After all the Facebook hype, I wanted to find out what the metaverse looked like and why a city would sign on.
So, standing on the bustling corner of Santa Monica Blvd and 3rd Street, I scanned FlickPlay’s interactive map on my phone in search of tokens.
A blue coin users can pick up in the FlickPlay app.
Previously a social wallet app designed to work with various types of digital art and collectibles; the app now works in downtown Santa Monica as a way both to draw you into storefronts and gamify the experience. That could be good business for brick and mortar stores and the city’s tax base.
Finding tokens wasn’t too difficult: The map was filled with glowing yellow, blue, and green dots indicating I was in the right place to cash in on tokens in FlickPlay’s new metaverse social app.
Similar to TikTok, the explore page on FlickPlay features full-screen, looping videos set to music that often include people dancing and utilizing their exclusive collectibles as a backdrop. The experience can be enthralling.
As a user, you have the option to like, comment and share on other social platforms. While apps like TikTok and Instagram focus on the subject, FlickPlay is focused on the landscape around them - bridging the gap between physical and digital spaces. At one point I became disoriented from the physical world.
FlickPlay allows people to collect tokens to unlock and show off videos through the app using their rare filter-like collectibles - most of which have a limited quantity.
Currently, the app doesn’t have any challenges, but like the NFTs there is a scarcity factor that increases the value of the collectibles. This gives the user the opportunity to monetize their digital collectibles. Like most mobile games, FlickPlay is free to download, but offers players the opportunity to use the tokens they earn in exchange for tangible goods.
Tokens are categorized into three colors: yellow, blue and green, and can be earned by visiting the map on the FlickPlay app. The yellow coins act as the player’s currency to unlock experiences or purchase items from local retailers, blue coins unlock collectibles, and green coins (the rarest) come with a reward.
If a token is nearby, you tap on its location on the map and the token will appear on your phone. I saw one token was further away and the app led me right to it. The token amount I received ranged from a value of 150-250 per coin and was stored in a digital wallet within the app. That token brought me to a Dodger’s Clubhouse on the Promenade.
While I received some odd looks walking around with my phone pointed toward the sky—there were tokens to be had!— I also saw some curious faces.
If FlickPlay founder and CEO Pierina Merino is right, that will soon be a familiar scene and everyone will be on the metaverse. “In the next two years, we're all going to own something digital,” she said. “We are all going to have some sort of wallet or digital inventory of objects.”
Merino established FlickPlay in 2019 and has grown the company to include 20 employees. Earlier this year, FlickPlay raised $5 million in seed funding backed by global VC firm Lightspeed Ventures and co-lead by SF-based seed investor, Abstract VC.
FlickPlay founder and CEO Pierina Merino hopes to create more activity in parts of Santa Monica that have traditionally been less trafficked.
Before Merino founded FlickPlay, she launched the startup Pemier, a 3D printed product line that was picked up by Nordstrom in over 30 stores six months after its launch in 2016.
But what was lacking was the inability to interact with the consumer. “As a founder, it was crazy to think that I made it to one of the top retailers in the U.S. and I was still not talking with my customer,” she said.
During this time she saw how the Museum of Ice Cream created communities where people can create shareable content as well as Pokemon Go’s impact in the way that people interact with the real world. With FlickPlay, Merino is hoping she can help create more activity in parts of Santa Monica that have traditionally been less trafficked—and are thus more susceptible to crime.
“It has been proven that activating unused city spaces with art reduces crime rates,” she said. “There is no better incentive for us than building a metaverse ecosystem with strong values and purpose that have a direct impact in the world we live in."
Merino believes her app can help the local economy, too. “You’re not only activating the city from a creative standpoint, and enabling the city to control the narrative and the storyline of how people interact with their different locations, but it also involves local retailers,” she said.
As someone who has never been interested in gaming, I found the app entertaining. It even brought me to stores I’ve never been to before, like BookMonster. Even though I didn’t earn enough tokens to purchase physical items in one of the retailers, I’d consider coming back to rack up more tokens once more local retailers jump on board which would incentivize shoppers like myself to go out and play.
After about three hours of participating in the metaverse, My token counter hit just over 2,000—finally I had enough to unlock some rare collectibles. I gravitated toward the Los Angeles Lakers collectible which cost me 900 tokens. Once unlocked, I was able to “flex” the purchase by showing off my new collectible in a video.
Merino, meanwhile, has plans to expand FlickPlay to other cities -- including New York, Miami and Chicago -- as early as next year. FlickPlay has also partnered with some local shops like fashion retailer JapanLA and Mexican restaurant Lanea to allow users to shop using their digital wallets.
“I like moving people through our cities,” she said. “At the same time, all these new consumer behaviors are really tied to how we're building our digital identity and the value that these offline interactions are having on how people perceive us online.”
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Decerry Donato
Decerry Donato is a reporter at dot.LA. Prior to that, she was an editorial fellow at the company. Decerry received her bachelor's degree in literary journalism from the University of California, Irvine. She continues to write stories to inform the community about issues or events that take place in the L.A. area. On the weekends, she can be found hiking in the Angeles National forest or sifting through racks at your local thrift store.
Behind Her Empire: ComplYant Founder and CEO Shiloh Johnson on Helping Small Businesses
02:10 PM | March 20, 2023
On this episode of Behind Her Empire, ComplYant founder and CEO Shiloh Johnson discusses her journey to building a multimillion dollar business and making knowledge of taxes more accessible.
Prior to starting her own business, Johnson worked at a large real estate conglomerate that was in the middle of a massive audit. After submitting her calculations, Johnson ended up saving the company millions of dollars, but with little personal reward.
“I realized two things as a result of that,” she said. “I can do this at the grand level and B, they are never going to pay me what I’m worth. At that point I was like, I’m pretty sure I can do this on my own and make way more money and be good. I don’t need to have the biggest firm in the world. I just wanted to be able to help people and I wanted to be able to be the master of my own domain.”
While Johnson stepped away from the corporate world, her time spent in her previous roles proved there are accessibility gaps in the tax industry. Johnson recognized that there was a need to support small business owners in a more accessible and effective way when it came to taxes and thus, ComplYant was born.
“The sole goal is to sort of grapple all of the tax under one umbrella and serve it up on a very simple platter for the small business owner,” she explained.
Founded in 2019, Johnson’s startup, ComplYant, is a tech platform that provides small business owners with all the information they need to properly manage their business taxes.
“We take tax code at the local level, the state level, federal level and we truncate it down into a searchable database that returns back to you all of the tax types that would matter to your business,” Johnson said. “And then calendars them all out throughout the year for you so that you get email and text reminders.”
The fruits of Johnson’s labor started during Johnson’s college career when she worked for a large international retailer and her boss advised her to switch her major from business to accounting.
“I started to realize very quickly that it was a superpower,” Johnson said. “Tax information was not widely known in the U.S. Nobody teaches accounting. They don't teach tax unless you're at the collegiate level and then you really even then don't get it unless you are really deep in the industry. I know these secret things that no one else knows and I can teach other people. So I took on the challenge.”
Her passion for spreading this knowledge has helped catapult her success. Johnson saw the vision and value in ComplYant and said that helps fuel her confidence when it came to pitching to investors.
“You'll notice if you've ever tried to raise money and you're a minority listening to this, it's very hard to get the first check,” she said. “The first check is unbelievably difficult because it requires you to have an advocate that sees the thing you're doing when no one else sees value in it and says yes.”
So Johnson shifted her approach, instead she moved away from reading from a script and leaned into her strength.
“I stopped trying to pitch,” Johnson said. “My strong suit is naturally just being me and just talking. That is how I can connect with the investor the best.”
dot.LA Reporter Decerry Donato contributed to this post.
This podcast is produced by Behind Her Empire. The views and opinions expressed in the show are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect those of dot.LA or its newsroom.
Hear more of the Behind Her Empire podcast. Subscribe on Stitcher, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radioor wherever you get your podcasts.
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Yasmin Nouri
Yasmin is the host of the "Behind Her Empire" podcast, focused on highlighting self-made women leaders and entrepreneurs and how they tackle their career, money, family and life.
Each episode covers their unique hero's journey and what it really takes to build an empire with key lessons learned along the way. The goal of the series is to empower you to see what's possible & inspire you to create financial freedom in your own life.
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