A Star is Born

It's an incredible, fertile time to be working with talent, specifically scripted TV actors. For those that are dismissive of the influencer market being saturated, lets pause a minute and look at the numbers of new shows in the “TV" space: FX estimates over 500 scripted shows in 2017, heading to 600 in 2018 with Apple, Amazon, FB, YouTube, Hulu, Netflix plus networks aggressively investing in programming. That's almost a 100% increase from 5 years ago. And if you highlight just two characters in each show, that's 1,200 and now focus on the top 10% you’re looking at 120 “Rising Stars" who could bring their engaged social audience to a partnership in 2018.

By now you have all seen the buzz around Stranger Things Season 2. Well last year Finn, Caleb, MBB, Gaten and Noah were just kids on a sci-fi pilot. Today they are legitimate stars with super fans following their journey every step of the way. Having recently worked with Finn Wolfhard from Stranger Things for a Unilever campaign and Christian Navarro from 13 Reasons Why for McDonalds, it's apparent not only do the new crop of stars drive incredible results, but they are truly social natives and understand how to tell great stories. It's the new Hollywood.

But the story gets better. We can now use social data to identify those “actor” influencers with target demographics, who are both growing engagement and fans above market rates, creating “social velocity.” Once you identify the Rising Star run an affinity screen to find the perfect brand Match. So if you’re emotional about your new favorite character (hard not to be), double check the data to prove you’re not the only fan.

Now go binge watch Season 2!