Some Future Day

Marc Beckman: Aisha, it is so nice to see you. I'm so happy. Finally, after like a year. We're getting you on Some Future Day. It's great to see you. How are you today?
Aisha Counts: I am good. No, it's, it's good to be here. I know. I was thinking about that. We were been talking about doing this for a while, so it's nice that we're finally making it happen.
Marc Beckman: Long time. Long time. You know, it's interesting you're covering an area that a lot of our viewers love this, this, uh, evolution into the creator economy. You're also providing a very important role for society: journalism. So I thought before we get into like the creator economy and all things digital, I wanna go backwards in time and talk about how you ended up, like how did you end up getting into journalism?
What was your career path to take you there?
Aisha Counts: It is been such an interesting journey. I mean, that's life, right? You sort of go on these unexpected paths. When I went into college, yeah, allegedly, right? When I went into college, I was a business and philosophy major, so I was like, I wanna understand business, I wanna understand the markets and all those sorts of things.
I had sort of gone through that financial crisis 2008, really impacted my family and I was like, I wanna understand what happened and have that sort of knowledge. And then I just loved philosophy and thinking and reading. And so I thought I was going to go work in business for a couple years and then become a lawyer.
That was sort of the plan. And then I realized three years, a hundred thousand plus dollars of debt and that whole process maybe wasn't for me. So I worked in management consulting for a couple years, right outta school and I. Did the typical consultant live traveling every week working for some of the biggest companies in the world and still had that sort of itch to tell stories, to ask bigger questions.
And so during the pandemic, like a lot of folks, I was thinking about what my next steps were and. The light bulb sort of clicked off and I said, oh, I can do journalism. I have the business background. I'm interested in asking some of these questions. Let me see if I can weasel my way into the industry.
Managed to get an internship, so I quit my consulting job. Took this internship. My parents were like, what are you doing? And uh, it turned into a job. I worked there and then ended up at Bloomberg just through meeting mutual friends and they had a need for someone to write about social media. I had an interest and.
That was that, and obviously being a consultant really helped with, with Bloomberg. I, I'm like, I know how to read financial statements and do all that stuff from, from business school.
Marc Beckman: Sure. But it's kind of interesting, uh, the makeup of your acumen, the makeup of, of who you are. When you talk about taking that risk, leaving consulting and taking an internship, right? Like your parents thought you were nuts probably, but what were you thinking? Like Gen Z often asks me like, how do I get into it?
I want to break into finance or a fashion or. Art or music, whatever. And my answer is always like, you just gotta start. You gotta roll up your sleeves and get into it. Grab an internship, get an entry level job, but you gotta start. So in a way, you kind of went backwards career-wise, right? You had this interesting, probably cushy like consulting gig, and then you are like, oh, we're gonna hit reset and start again.
Like that must have been tough. How did you work through that issue?
Aisha Counts: For me, I felt like I knew I would regret not taking that risk and taking the leap. And in my head whether I thought this was true, maybe it was true. I felt like, so I worked for Ernst Young at the time. Ernst and Young is always gonna be there. That's what my head was. And so I'm like, if this doesn't work, I will go back to Ernst and Young, or I'll go to KPMG or Deloitte, or in Accenture or summer else.
I still have that skillset. I'll just go back. 'cause I know that's the big stable thing. But if I don't take this leap and go into journalism now, I sort of felt like. I might miss my chance. It gets harder. The older you get, the more responsibilities, the more secure you get. And so I just felt like I was at this point of just do it now and see if it works.
And the only way I'm gonna know if it works and if I like it, is to just take the leap and do it. So
Marc Beckman: That's cool. That's good. Good for you. I, you know, it's funny, like for me, my legal background is what? Gives me a lot of respect for journalists, especially like traditional journalism, right? Because we're seeing a fundamental shift. In fact, on my show, I had an award-winning journalist, a White House correspondent who came on.
You probably know Jessica Yellen, and she fancies herself a news creator, like the first ever like political news creator. That's how she positions herself. But I think journalism is really important. The reason I mention it in the context of a lawyer is because I think journalists telling the truth play a fundamental role in making sure that society works properly.
Did any of that come to mind when you took that first internship gig?
Aisha Counts: It did and that you mentioned. I mean, there are so many parallels between law and journalism and I felt like a lot of the things I was interested in about law, I. I could do in journalism. So I mentioned I was a philosophy major and I was studying political philosophy. And so my whole lens was how do you design a society that's fair for everyone?
Gives everyone equal opportunity, both economically, socially. So those are the sorts of things I was thinking about. And lawyers and journalists both approached that just from different lenses. And so I was thinking about that as I went to journalism is how can I ask some of these bigger questions?
About the role of business in society or technology or all those sorts of things. And so Abso, it absolutely was a consideration for me and I found a lot of the things I liked about journalism were things that first kind of drew me and attracted me to, to legal profession. Also, I.
Marc Beckman: Yeah, I think it's interesting. Journalism is shifting and I think I mentioned to you at some point, like the Wall Street Journal has disappointed me personally lately, I. One of my best guests ever was the editor in chief, the former editor in chief of the Wall Street Journal. And during our conversation he said something to me about how journalism is funda, fundamentally changing.
What he mentioned was the newsroom was in place at the Wall Street Journal. He was there, by the way, for like 30 years. And he said that the, the newsroom used to be there just to report the facts, but now because of. Digital reporting creators, et cetera, social media, you know, the entire ecosystem that's at play here.
A lot of the journalists in that Wall Street Journal newsroom are looking to create the narrative to actually set the news rather than reporting the facts. So I'm wondering like, do you ever have that tension, personally? Do you ever think in terms of like, what's gonna get the clicks? How are we gonna drive revenue to Bloomberg versus.
It's my job to report the facts and I'm, that's all I'm putting in here for my readers.
Aisha Counts: It is such an interesting way to think about it. I think most journalists probably think about both of those things. Of course, we wanna report the facts. Give people a sense of what's happening, but you also think about how can I break news and where can I break news and how, where can I sort of be the expert on something?
Right? So if I'm writing about Elon Musk, there's a couple people who have written books about Elon Musk and Twitter, or him and Tesla and SpaceX. And so when you're going into that space, you think about what's the existing coverage? What's Undercovered and where can I sort of dive in? Right? So with Musk, I mean it's hard to think about Elon Musk as being undercover, but maybe Neuralink doesn't have as much reporting as Twitter does.
Or maybe there's some more things to find out about Tesla. 'cause we've been so focused on Doge. And so you do sort of think about that in a way of like, where can I dive further and where can I sort of one. Not make a name for yourself in order to be known, but in order to be an expert on something so that sources come to you and tell you information.
And it's sort of like this flywheel. You start breaking news on Doge. More and more people that work for Doge are gonna come to you and you're gonna be seen as the person who knows what's going on and breaks the news. And so it actually helps your reporting. So there is sort of an element of strategy to it, of thinking about like where do you wanna focus and spend time and dive deeper and, and people's curiosity.
Leads them. And that's how you get a lot of these huge scoops. They just get obsessed with one area of a business or a person and they just keep going further and further than anyone else. And then that's how you get those really big investigations and, and those sorts of things.
Marc Beckman: So traditional journalists like you are really important also because you apply a certain methodology to your, uh, process, for example, fact checking, right? Like how, how does that work? And then I'll take you to the next question, like, how does the fact checking process work for a traditional journalist?
Aisha Counts: It is such an extensive process. 'cause on the one hand, before you even put words on a page, you wanna make sure you're hearing the same things from multiple people that are reputable in their spaces. So if I am hearing that Twitter is firing a bunch of people, I obviously wanna hear that from people inside the company, people that would know.
So ideally someone who's more senior, maybe an executive. And I would want to hear that from two or three or four people. And then I wanna go to the company and say, Hey, I heard that you're gonna be laying off people, or sources are telling us this. Do you have any comment they'll either confirm or deny, or maybe they won't say anything.
So you have that, then you actually write the story and then you, your editor goes through it line by line and says, how do you know this information? How do you know this fact? How do you know that? And they sort of question where you're getting everything. Who were your sources? Who do you, you know. And so you do that and sometimes you might go to legal review and then you have another editor who will look at it.
So it's a pretty extensive process. 'cause every single line we have to make sure how do we know this information and where did this come from and can we trust it? 'cause every time we put out a story, it's my reputation on the line. It's my editor's reputation and it's Bloomberg's reputation, right? If we're putting out something that's.
That's false. And then of course you put it out and then if you make a mistake, then you correct it and you update the story and you put a note and say, Hey, we got this wrong. And that whole process
Marc Beckman: So that higher standard is something I have tremendous amount of respect for. I think it's really critical, and it goes back to us talking about journalism playing a significant role as a cornerstone. Within a functioning, let's say democratic society, but we're living in a day and age now where there are so many people, creators specifically who are, you know, kind of delivering the news and making news themselves.
Look at Joe Rogan for example. I mean, his audience audiences. Not just massive and tremendous on a global scale, but it's almost like anything Joe Rogan says, people believe, but he's probably not going through that same methodology that you are as a qualified journalist as it relates to fact checking, et cetera.
He's a comedian with a big platform telling stories and getting paid a lot, so we could probably use. You know, or create like 10 different examples of the modern day, Joe Rogan, what's the risk to society? Because I think that next generation, gen z, gen alpha, they don't really see or understand the fact checking methodology that, you know, some of the more reputable, uh, uh, news outlets like Bloomberg bring.
So what happens to society when individuals like Joe Rogan are delivering the news?
Aisha Counts: I mean, it's something that we think about all the time. Right. And it's interesting because most people don't know how a news organization works and what the process is. I didn't know what the process was before becoming a journalist. I knew that there was fact checking and they had some sort of an editorial process, but I didn't know the extent of it.
And so part of it may be, and I, I see some newsrooms doing this. How can we peel back the layers on our process and tell people, this is where we got our information, and this is why you can trust us. We might just have to do that more as journalists and as news organizations. Part of it does fall on consumers and readers to think about, okay, if I'm listening to Joe Rogan's podcast, where is he getting this information?
Is he qualified to be telling me this information? Does he have any, you know, biases or reasons to lean one way or the other? I'd say that these, that's the other thing we try to do as journalist is how do we make sure we're not being biased? So if we're writing a piece about politics and everyone that we quote is conservative, well, let's try to get someone who's a little bit more left leaning in there too, so that we can have both sides of the, of the conversation.
Right. So we try at least somewhat to be, to be objective and and unbiased. The challenge with a lot of creators, whether they're news creators or just general entertainment, they're not necessarily trying to be unbiased, which is fine ha to have your opinion, but then if you start sharing things as if they're fact and as if this is the truth, that's where it gets tricky, right?
If you haven't gone through the process of verifying and fact checking and. And making sure you're talking to experts. So it's a, it's a challenge. I mean, I think part of it is maybe a need for more media literacy for people to really understand what information they should trust and what they shouldn't.
Part of it is on us as journalists and these organizations to maybe peel back the layers a little bit on our process and explain how we got information and be a little bit more transparent. Um, but it's something we think about day in and day out. I mean, I spent. The past two years or so, writing about misinformation on social media and content moderation, and how do you deal with the influx of information that's coming Now, you think about ai, the speed at which people can create or spread information that is partially true or maybe false or misleading.
How do you handle that? How do you grapple with that? And really, the only way I think is for individual people to really be conscious of what their media diet is and what information they're consuming because there's. It's almost, there's no way to stop the flow of information, right? It's just not gonna be possible.
So how do we approach that? And then it's interesting too because a lot of the social media platforms have stepped back from wanting to moderate certain content or label things as misleading or stop people from, you know, maybe sharing false information. Which can be good and bad, but the challenge is just there's gonna be more information out there that potentially is untrue, right?
But then you have to balance that with what they say, free speech. And so it's, it's just super complicated and I don't think anyone has the, the answer, but it's something we think about all the time.
Marc Beckman: Well, it's interesting on the news front, and again, I know we're gonna get to the idea of creators, but on the news front, with AI generated. News. I think just, um, last week Reuters reported that China was using generative AI to create anti-American, anti-capitalist, anti-democratic, uh, reporting that they were pushing into Taiwan.
And they were pushing it in with video and print and like some, uh, photorealistic imagery. So they're trying to like fracture the Taiwanese, like apparently they were trying to divide the Taiwanese. As it relates to the general sentiment of America. So, um, you know, it's incredible because you have the ability to create, um, uh, biased content and then deliver it into an entire region of the world.
But look at the political ramifications when the quote unquote news is coming from a political entity.
Aisha Counts: I've seen that a lot. I mean, even on I if Facebook, I mean they, so they put out this threat report every quarter and. They basically would say, we've seen bad actors in Russia, in China, in Iran, using social media, using AI bots to spread information. So whether it's saying, um, you should vote for this political candidate, or maybe there'll be a news article and they'll have a bot comment on the article and say, this article is so accurate, or this is, so, I agree with this completely.
And he, you know, things like that. So they'll use ai. I don't know that. It's, I mean, Meta says that it hasn't sort of stopped them from being able to detect, detect and take down some of those, what they call covert influence networks. But it's happening already around the world. Exactly what you're saying, folks trying to use persuasion and and influence to get people to think differently or to vote differently or to act differently.
And that's actually something people are really concerned about, aside from just sharing false information, when you start to be able to persuade people. And, and make them think differently. And you start to use emotional tactic. I mean, that's where it gets sort of, sort of scary and a little bit concerning, but it's happening all over the world.
And again, how do you, how do you approach that? Right? You sort of maybe use AI to detect some of it. You have human people who are going through and taking things down, but the,
Marc Beckman: so complicated, especially with these bigger ecosystems, right? So if you look at, like these big tech companies look at, since we're hovering around Meta, I mean they own social media verticals like Instagram and Facebook. They own a content creation, AI in Llama. Right, they own WhatsApp and uh, what they could do then is effectively drive.
Um, uh, content creation through artificial intelligence, uh, marketing and promotion through social media. And then on the other side of it, if they want to use cryptocurrency or any type of currency, they, they accept transactions. They could, they could con, they could. Uh, you know, provide commerce a across those two elements.
So it's in, it's incredible. I think they're actually, um, in Congress this week to see whether or not they're monopolizing and then move over to like Amazon. Amazon is right there too. Now it's, there are rumors that Amazon is gonna purchase TikTok. And again, you create this whole thing with TikTok, um, AI generation social media.
S commerce. Then you have the content creation for Amazon Video, Amazon Prime, and then obviously the merchandise side of it. So these big tech companies are really becoming way more powerful in some cases. I heard somebody talking about Meta the other day saying that Meta could be even powerful than certain governments on the planet.
So if they're creating and delivering, um, media like this, if they're creating and delivering content that could influence people, that's biased. I mean, it could really impact society.
Aisha Counts: It could, I mean, you mentioned just the scope and scale. Meta has over 4 billion users across WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, and in some countries Facebook is sort of like their internet infrastructure in some ways. There are so many businesses that do business through WhatsApp, like it's, especially in places like Brazil or India.
And so the power, as you mentioned, it's not just, oh, let me share photos and videos with my friends. It's maybe our main platform to do commerce for our business or to talk to our customers. Maybe it's the sort of the infrastructure for us to access the internet and to access, um, whether it's shopping or just leisure information.
You mentioned LLlama Meta is a leading AI company. There are hundreds of startups and even other companies that are using their large language models to build AI chat bots or tools or other products and functionality. So you think about just the ecosystem and then you think about, and art, um, and augmented reality and virtual reality.
They're a major player in that space too. And so if that becomes sort of a leading platform, what are they gonna do that, I mean, they just, they have their hands in so, so
Marc Beckman: what could go wrong? No problem. Right? So they, the, the, you know, just to segue into the creators, like, it becomes problematic also because they could impact the creator's economy, um, in adverse ways for those creators that have been. You know, for years grinding and grinding and building and building, building their audience, building their brand's, positioning.
Um, I understand that there are deep fakes of creators now that are being built. I don't know if you've been following that story, but it's pretty alarming. I know that I'm like a little bit of like a mini. Many mini, mini micro creator with this show. And every week I have these fake accounts on social media popping up and they, they give the appearance as if it's my account.
Like they literally take my post, post my show, et cetera. But for what happens with, um, some of these bigger creators, again, we could go back to Joe Rogan, where people are creating deep fakes, they're using ai and you believe that Joe Rogan is saying something that could impact a society in a terrible way.
Aisha Counts: Yeah, I mean, we've seen that with celebrities. We've, I mean, we've seen so many instances. Of that. And there's been a couple different approaches, right? I think YouTube last week or the week before, um, talked more about their AI detection tools so they can detect deep fakes of the big folks like a Dude Perfect or a Mr.
Beast, and try to take those down. And I think they've been doing that, and the other platforms also have policies about that, right? You not using AI to impersonate someone else and they try to take it down. But as we mentioned, right, the scale of AI and how quickly it can move, how do you detect everything?
How do you find everything, right? And then if you, like someone's telling me there was an advertisement of Andrew Huberman supporting some supplement or some product, and he came out and said, that's not me. That's a deep fake that that's not, I never supported that product, or whatever it was. And so you think about that too, if you have someone like a Joe Rogan or Andrew Huberman.
Saying, oh, buy this product or vote for this person, or use this supplement. And that's not actually them. People are gonna go and do that. I mean, right. That's the whole idea of an influencer, is that they have people that are gonna listen to what they say. So what happens if someone comes in, creates a fake version of them, says all this kind of crazy stuff, and people believe it and do it.
Like how do you sort of combat that? I mean, people find it, but by the time you find it, sometimes the, a little bit of the damage is done.
Marc Beckman: So pulling back all the way back now and focusing in on, uh, from a generalized perspective, the creator vertical, what is the state of the creator economy today? Like, what do, what are you seeing? Where do you, where do you see, um, its current status and then where do you see us going?
Aisha Counts: It's interesting. I feel like we're at this sort of inflection point. I know a lot of people talk about that Goldman Sachs number, half a trillion dollars by 2027. It's a huge number, obviously. I think that gives an indication of one, this industry is actually being measured. So the fact that Goldman Sachs is coming in saying, Hey, this is how big it's gonna be five, 10 years ago.
Was Goldman Sachs doing that? No. So the size, the maturity, the amount of money that's going into the industry, I think is waking a lot of people up, especially in more, more traditional sectors. And then there's. With that, a sort of professionalization, at least that's how I'm, I'm saying it, where you have marketing companies and agencies that are actually measuring campaigns in a different way.
So instead of saying, Hey, we're gonna find the, the biggest person on TikTok, we're gonna find the D'Amelios and throw $50,000 at them, it's saying, okay, now we can actually see. Here's the percentage of people that buy something that the D'Amelios promote. So we can see their conversion rate, we can actually measure ROI.
We can see how much we spent on this brand, how many people it reached, what the demographics are. So the amount of data is a lot more. So that's the professionalization. So marketers and agencies and brands are getting a lot smarter about which creators we work with, who can actually help us reach our objectives.
And so that's led to a lot of these sort of like mid-size or maybe smaller creators being able to get these brand deals because they have these super active and engaged communities and people actually click and buy and those sorts of things. So that's one in on the advertising side, the tools for creators are getting more sophisticated.
So, so many AI tools, I mean, we're using Riverside right now, right? That's a big one that a lot of folks use to help you more quickly edit your podcasts and, and different things. There's all sorts of AI tools for like dubbing and translating YouTube videos for being able to edit more quickly, um, for being able to take a podcast and chop it up into bite-sized pieces that you can throw on TikTok or Instagram.
So there's that into things. The platforms are obviously changing. More and more creators are making a living off of the social media platforms. More of them are starting to actually pay creators. YouTube has obviously been the big one, but now we're seeing snap share advertising revenue. We'll probably see other platforms start to do that more also.
Um, and then there's institutional investors in the space. So there is a VC firms like Slope Ventures, which just launched a $60 million creator fund to invest in brands led by creators. We're seeing PE and VC firms really investing, whether they're buying YouTube channels. Or they're investing in brands led by creators.
So you're just seeing more money come in, you're seeing some m and a, um, later acquired Mally from like affiliate marketing perspective. So it's, the inflection I think is really more data, more money, more measurement, more folks in this industry. And then you're seeing some of these big brands and companies really start to pay attention, whether it's a Unilever saying, Hey, we're gonna.
Up our marketing spend on influencers to 50% of our total, you know, marketing spend or whatever it is. Um, so you see that also. So it's, it's so many things, but I think it's just more and more people getting involved, more money, and I think we're gonna see that continue and then you're gonna start to see like, where is the real value for investors and for some of these big companies.
And we're still trying to figure that out, right? Like, which startups are gonna emerge? Which creators are gonna go on and create billion dollar brands, the next Disney or whatever it is, and, um, and, and which brands are gonna lean even further into influencer marketing and, and make that a bigger part of their strategy.
Marc Beckman: Yeah, it's really interesting. So what you're talking about is like the formation of an entire creator commercial ecosystem where it's just perhaps the content creators at the center, but then you have these specialized entities to. Support executing. Right. So it's the advertising agency on the data analytics piece, I'm sure that specialized lawyers and and accountants are coming into play and beyond.
Um, is that number right that you shared with regards to Unilever? Is it, uh, half their budget is now being dispersed for influencer marketing towards creators?
Aisha Counts: I can't remember if it was 50% of their like social media marketing budget or 50% of their marketing budget. I'll have to go. Look it up, but whatever it was, they're increasing. Their spend with influence is about 20 fold, which is huge.
Marc Beckman: Yeah, it certainly says a lot, and I like this, um, separation that you're creating as far as like the big names and then the experts, the small influ micro influencers, the experts in their area. I always feel from an advertising agency perspective that it's the smaller experts that actually trigger the sales.
Right. Especially if you're. Um, you know, very trustworthy. Like for example, I know that people look at their Peloton instructors as knowing everything possible in that genre. So if those Peloton instructors wanna sell gear, equipment, devices specific to cycling. Most of their fans don't even hesitate.
They just trust and they buy versus the bigger side. I think you mentioned earlier, Mr. Beast, I mean, we gotta get, we gotta get into Mr. Beast for a second. We've never spoke about him before on this show, but he is really at the top of the mountain now. I mean, he's just so impressive. With what he's built and what he continues to build.
I know that you recently wrote a story, if I understand correctly, where he's generating now more revenue from merchandise like chocolate. Is that, is that correct? Versus the content that he's creating itself?
Aisha Counts: Yeah, he did $250 million of revenue in chocolate last year. I mean, it's.
Marc Beckman: million.
Aisha Counts: 250 million, which is wild to think about, and it's sort of the economic engine for his videos. He loses money on his videos most of the time, either because he's giving away a lot of money, or I think he spends about $4 million for each video on average.
And so to recoup that
Marc Beckman: million production budget per video.
Aisha Counts: video.
Marc Beckman: Wow.
Aisha Counts: Yeah. On average.
Marc Beckman: That's bigger than any like Gucci, Vuitton, any of their campaigns. That's massive.
Aisha Counts: It's huge. And if you think about the scale of what he's doing right, it sort of makes sense. If he's traveling to the most dangerous places in the world and he's flying all around the world and you bring the crew there and, um, yeah, I mean, he has a massive, he has hundreds of people that work for him, so he's just taken it to a whole different scale, right?
I mean, there's just not many people at his level, but. That's an indicator of the potential of this industry. You think about, he has his YouTube channel, of course, the sort of media engine. He had the number one unscripted show on Amazon with Beast Games. He has Feast Bowls, which did the $250 million in sales.
He has another brand Lunchly. He had a chain of restaurants called Mr. Beberg. I think he's no longer involved. There were some lawsuits and things like that. He has a software company called View Stats that does analytics on YouTube. And he's planning to launch more companies and more brands all under this umbrella of, you know, beast industries and all sort of supported by this media engine of we're gonna have a video every week and we're gonna promote our prod products in the video.
And I mean, it's, it's just massive. Right? And then he has, I think, 360 million subscribers right now on YouTube, probably more than that. So he's really building this diversified company and he's been raising money at a $5 billion valuation. Could there be an IPO in the future? I mean, it's, the potential is is pretty, pretty wild.
Marc Beckman: So you're really looking at a company like I, I think you referred to it as Beast Industries. I mean, it's kicking off, it sounds like, about a billion dollars in revenue from all of these ancillary, uh, products and services that he's providing. I.
Aisha Counts: Yeah, hundreds of millions for sure. At the very least, hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue. And, um, and, and again, it's like, like feasts, I think he started a couple years ago. And to hit that amount of sales in the CPG space is hard to do. But we see brands led by creators doing that, right? They're hitting sales faster now.
We'll see what the longevity is of it, but. The power of having an audience, of having a bunch of followers. They know your name and they go into Walmart and they see, oh my gosh, Mr. Beast, if you're like a young boy, that's a dream for you. And of course you're gonna make your mom or your parents buy you the that chocolate bar over any other bar on the shelf because you're watching his videos every single week.
Right?
Marc Beckman: So, so you have these, um, legacy businesses like Pepsi's been a client of mine for over a decade. Um, Hershey's gotta be like totally concerned about this type of a situation. So what are you seeing legacy brands do to push back on these trajectories? I mean, the fact that you're saying he was able to like, put a product into the marketplace and in two years.
Get, you know, huge traction, um, and, and consumption. It's massive. So how are the legacy industries reacting?
Aisha Counts: That's a good question. I, if they're smart, I think that they will partner or maybe acquire. So Feastables, for example, is in Walmart. Walmart actually is interesting because they've given shelf space to a lot of these creative good brands. So Jake Paul last year, I think in the summertime, launched a men cares brand called W, and when he launched it, he launched it in Walmart.
So Walmart was early in saying, okay, this is an untested product, but because of Jake Paul, who he is, his brand, how many people follow him? We're gonna put that in stores. That doesn't normally happen, right? You don't have to like sort of prove yourself in smaller. Regional grocers or the gas station, whatever, and then you kind of move up to the Walmart.
So I think you see instances of that where it's like, okay, we're gonna give shelf space or we're gonna partner with these, these folks. 'cause it's a, it can be sort of a win-win, right? You get more people into your store, you get that younger demographic. I think about, uh, the NFL has a creator program, so they're inviting creators to the Super Bowl and to all their big events and.
So I think folks are trying to figure out how to partner with creators and, and do it in different ways. Maybe they'll invest in a creator brand, uh, maybe they'll partner with them. So there's a few different companies that will say, Hey, we're gonna work with an influencer. We'll help you deal with the distribution and the packaging and actually building the product.
And we'll have, you know, whatever equity stake, we'll do sort of a joint venture. So I think it's, it's those sorts of things. Um. Or if you think about Hollywood, right? If you think about the, Jake and Logan Paul have their reality show on Max, and then Mr. Beast obviously has beast games on Amazon. So it's saying, okay, we're gonna give a deal to this creator to bring their content onto our platform, co-create something with them.
So I think those are the approaches that that folks will take. Um, it's
Marc Beckman: if you're gonna, if you're gonna like really highlight one CPG company, let's say, that has done a great job at bringing creators into. Uh, the brick and mortar marketplace, who do you think did it the best?
Aisha Counts: It's a good question. Like the on the retailer end, like the Walmart Inn or like the actual companies that are like,
Marc Beckman: E either like I, you know, either way, like whether it's a brand or a retailer, like who do you think is doing it the best? I think it's interesting, like in the Walmart example with Jake Paul, um, you know, clearly they're buying his community. The product is strong. The product, as I understand stands on its own, but he's polarizing.
Like a lot of people don't like him for one reason or another, but yet Walmart, this mass brand, sees the power of his loyal following, right? Regardless of the people that don't like him. So they're taking a risk. But if you were gonna like, hover around some, some other brand and, and you know, say, look, these people get what's happening with creators, which brand would you, would you point towards?
Aisha Counts: I mean, there's so many in the beauty space, like the Ulta Beauties in the Sephora. I mean, they've obviously been huge on and probably early on, partnering with creators from more of the marketing perspective and finding these beauty influencers. And putting their products in their stores. So the beauty, beauty in general, right, was one of the sort of early categories, I would say of like influencer marketing.
So there's definitely folks in that space. Amazon is an interesting one in the creator space 'cause they have a lot of creators that have their Amazon storefronts are using the affiliate links. They have folks going live, they've invested in creator economy, startups like spotter. Which sort of buys the back catalog of, of YouTubers.
They obviously have Beast games, so they're one that is kind of interesting 'cause they have played in the space, um, for a while now. I would say mostly on this sort of like affiliate link end. Um, I'm trying to think of another one. I mean, obviously like a, Netflix has done some shows with creators over the years.
They've tried a bunch of different folks there, so there's a few companies that are sort of doing different things. I think a lot of companies are still doing the. More of the traditional marketing end of things of like, how do we push into influencer marketing? And that's a lot of the fashion and lifestyle and, and beauty brands.
Marc Beckman: Yeah, I think it's interesting that you raise beauty. It's, um, I saw a stat, uh, just recently released that, uh, showed that s commerce specifically on TikTok for beauty is just going through the roof. And some of the numbers that are being achieved in that s commerce space with TikTok are challenging. Ulta just.
You know, straight up, like they, I think they got to like 2 billion in revenue for beauty on s commerce and TikTok in a tiny, tiny little bit of time compared to like how long it took Alta to get to that threshold. So it's remarkable what's happening there. Um, who do you think a challenger to Mr. Beast is?
Like, who will be the next Mr. Beast?
Aisha Counts: That's a great question. You know it. If I think about, okay, who's gonna build it? Because really at this point, right, he's built this media company and it has all these different offshoots. The other creator that comes to mind that's done that is like a Dude Perfect. They have merchandise, they have a live tour, they have a lot of different channels.
They just built a huge headquarters out in Frisco. I went to there, I went, I visited a few weeks ago. And they're gonna do live events there. They're trying to build a theme park. So if I think about just like the scale, they don't have the same amount of followers. They obviously have a different approach.
They've been talking to like Netflix and other streamers about doing a show there. So if I think about creators that are kind of across the board, have this diversified company, they're one that comes immediately to my, um, there are probably others that I'm, I'm missing, but in terms of just like. Having the, the physical products and the media side and all of that.
Marc Beckman: It's interesting 'cause if you look at Mr. Beast and you look at, Dude Perfect. A common trade or a common strategy for. Both of them is to create like these eye-popping shocking moments for the viewers, right? Like they really are like shocking. Um, their whole audience, their whole fan base. Um, I, I, I imagine you agree with me if you are gonna see successful creators or if you were gonna advise.
Somebody who wants to become a creator, what would you give them as it relates to, you know, three elements that they should master to become excellent creators? To maybe challenge Dude Perfect. And Mr. Beast in the future. Like you're talking to that 16-year-old girl who's sitting in her apartment in Manhattan today and dreaming of becoming the next big creator in the beauty space, but they're also in beauty.
They're shocking. They're doing things that are shocking and innovative and. Eye popping as well. So what would be the three, um, areas that you would guide a, a, a new, the next generation of creators towards?
Aisha Counts: Based
Marc Beckman: as skills go, I.
Aisha Counts: based on conversations I've had. I mean, at the end of the day, right, it comes down to storytelling. You touched on something being shocking and kind of having these moments. You definitely need to do that on YouTube. Just in terms of retention. If I'm watching. And I can watch for free. If I'm not engaged, I'm just gonna click off and go watch something else.
Right. It's, it's just a very different kind of behavior. So having something that's shocking, Mr. Beast has said if you wanna make something go viral, you have to do something that no one's ever done before. So a lot of the big YouTubers are doing that. So have something like shocking or big, something that can grab people's attention.
The thumbnail is super important to get people to click on. So thumbnails and titles that just kind of like a logistical piece. Um. And consistency, right? Like you're not gonna post one video and go viral. Just YouTube is just such a different platform than a TikTok. So posting consistently over time, and you know, you might have to do 50 or a hundred videos before you sort of break through.
Maybe you have to do 25, but it's just doing one video is just not, it's just not how you go viral and how you really get big. You have to really commit, I think, over a long period of time.
Marc Beckman: It's a lot of work though. Do you ever see some of these younger creators just burn out, like just totally from a health perspective? Are there mental issues that creators are going through these days?
Aisha Counts: Yeah, a lot of the even big creators have stepped back. I mean, David Dobrik stepped back from YouTube for a while and took a little bit of a break, I think. Um, I mean, there's been so many folks that have sort of stepped back for periods of time, because again, having to do that week after week after week is a lot.
You have to come up with the idea, you have to shoot it, you obviously have to edit it. And then to keep that fresh because you know, at any point you stop posting videos, your audience starts dropping. That impacts your income, your money. I see it a lot, especially on like a TikTok or an Instagram where folks are posting every day.
It's shorter, but you're still, you're posting every day, maybe multiple times a day. And so there's this sort of fear. You stop posting, you stop creating content, you lose your audience, and when that's your livelihood. What? What do you do? So, I mean, burnout is a huge challenge, and that's why I think we're in this point where more and more creators are saying, how can I launch a digital course or have an event series, or get other people to be the star of the video and hire out a team that can make stuff?
How do I launch a brand so I can make money without shooting a video? So I think that's why folks are going into these different areas of how can I have a business outside of having to post a video every day or every week?
Marc Beckman: Yeah. What about the, when it's an older person or an older generation? I know you covered the Ben Stiller, uh, product. Beverage launch, I think low sugar recently, and I'm sure a part of their strategy is to like tap into this creator economy, to tap into YouTube and then short form with shorts and going across Instagram and TikTok.
I imagine that's all part of their plan, but does it stick or, or is he gonna reach an audience that even knows who he is by going into this world?
Aisha Counts: You know, he should definitely try. I mean, at the very least, right? Like I think about. An example, someone like a Kevin Hart has worked with creators very well, and whether it's finding folks on TikTok that are rising star comedians and kind of bringing them into the fold and working with them and training them, he just partnered with a YouTuber, Kinigra Dion.
She makes like scripted series on YouTube. He just partnered with her to produce films that can be in theaters. So there are folks who are really leaning into it, and I think you should right one to, to reach a new audience, but also. It's just where the eyeballs are going. Like YouTube has more watch time on connected TVs and Netflix and Disney.
So if you think about the future and what young people are watching and where they're spending their time, if you're in more traditional media or entertainment and everything that's going on there, whether it's a writer strikes, less people in writers' rooms, less directors, less producers, less shows, there's less jobs, and.
Where the attention and where the eyeballs are, where the future is going, you, you, it'd be, it would behoove you to have your kind of, your toes in both areas, right? Like sure do the traditional stuff. I don't think TV's gonna go away forever, right? We still have books. Books haven't gone away, but there is a new generation that's spending more and more time on YouTube, and so if you can plan that space or partner with people that are in that space, why not do that?
Marc Beckman: For sure. And then we're seeing brands coming out of YouTube and other areas of the, from the creator economy that are trying to go back towards legacy, uh, distribution platforms. So. You highlighted a bunch of them with Amazon and Netflix, but of course I'd be remiss to fail to mention the Minecraft movie that came out.
And, you know, recently on, on this show, on Some Future Day, we had, uh, the, the creator for Ryan's World, the movie that came out that was released in traditional theaters. So what's your take on Minecraft launching in the movie theater?
Aisha Counts: I mean, I think it's done the most of any video game, movie ever, I think is what the stats are. I mean, it just absolutely blew up at the box office. From what I'm hearing from folks, I think it's a couple things. I mean, one, again, the younger generation on Minecraft, day in and day out, so they adapted it, but they, they made it feel kind of like Minecraft, the movie itself, like they didn't try to deviate too much from what it is.
And so all these kids, of course, like it was funny 'cause I, I work over by that Westfield Century City Mall and they had a huge like Minecraft activation. So they had some of the characters out in the mall and you could like walk around and every kid that walked by just freaked out. It was like, oh my gosh, we have to go down there and I wanna sort of be in that world.
And so I think, I mean that's perfect example of the creator economy and going where audiences are. Yes, it's a studio movie, but. Knowing that these kids are living and spending all their time in Minecraft, you make a movie about that. You make it actually feel like the game people are gonna show up. But again, it hasn't always worked, right?
There's been so many failures of these video game movies, so it's, it's sort of interesting.
Marc Beckman: It is creating all of these slashers. I used to use this adjective to describe one of my clients. Karl Lagerfeld, the former creative director of Chanel and Fendi, he would talk to me and we actually, I was the one that helped organize his movie deal with Zoolander, and then I put him into different deals with like Pepsi and beverage companies, and I would refer to him as a slasher because he was an amazing apparel and accessories designer who was an amazing photographer and a curator of music, and it was just like slash slash slash.
But now we're seeing this thing where people. That our slashers perhaps have more success. So like I know you also covered David Portnoy, um, recently, and he's kind of like a modern day slasher. He started off as a, a traditional sports journalist and then he like ramped up his personality. He is like. A a, um, a critic of pizza and he's created a whole, uh, conversation with his audience in cryptocurrency now.
And it goes beyond, but then all of a sudden it shifts again now. And you wrote about this, I believe, where the United States Department of Commerce offered him a role in the government. So. I don't know. For some reason all of this seems like it's not so good. Is there, like, is there a better reason for people to just stay in their lane?
Should David Portnoy ever be, uh, presented with an opportunity to work in the government or is he just like a, again, another person that's like shocking people all day long creating original content, tapping into his network and doing great with bars, stool, doing great with, you know, critiquing pizza, but do we need him in the United States Department of Commerce?
Aisha Counts: I don't think so. But that's also, I mean, think about our, our world now. I mean, some folks have called Trump the first reality TV president. In some ways, right?
Marc Beckman: For
Aisha Counts: The ability to get attention from the media, the ability to draw eyeballs, is it has an outsized impact. You can have a political career now because you're really popular on TikTok or YouTube or you know how to use those platforms, Like a lot of folks obviously credit, I mean, there's various reasons that Trump won, but some folks credit. His ability to go on these podcasts to work with some of these up and coming influencers. The Republican party in general has been really active about training the next generation of political stars and saying, Hey, we see potential in you.
We're gonna train you how to use social media, how to get your voice out and how to build an audience. Yeah.
Marc Beckman: I didn't know that. Wow.
Aisha Counts: And so there's organizations like Turning Point USA that have like an ambassador program, and they basically will help folks and train them how to be the next voices. So in the political sphere, if you think about the ability to build a business, we were talking about CPG.
If you have a massive audience and then I go to you and say, Hey, I wanna start a beauty brand, and I have a hundred million followers, of course they wanna do that because at least some of those people are gonna buy it books. A lot of books are going viral on TikTok and then they become bestsellers and then it turns into a movie, Colleen Hoover, and it ends with us.
And I won't get into the Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni drama, but. She got popular on TikTok and then so it, the ability to gain attention online allows you to launch a political career or launch a brand or get a bestselling book or get a movie deal or get a deal with that. I mean, it's, it's totally sort of changed how people get prominence in different areas.
Marc Beckman: It is totally transformative. I was watching Black Mirror, you know, the very popular like, I guess sci-fi series, and I don't know if you saw, have you seen any of the new EP episodes? Are
Aisha Counts: haven't seen the new ones. I, I remember watching one of the old ones where they, like, you could see how many likes people had and like they had like this weird social media episode way back in the day. That was sort of fun.
Marc Beckman: Yeah. But, but that, but it's interesting because what you're talking to is, uh, where social media, that episode I kind of remember vaguely, it was like where social media is. Used to create like a, um, a currency, uh, with regards to morals and ethics and behavior within that community. And we're seeing that cross into China right now.
And that concept, right? If you behave a certain way, you could have access to more. But what I was gonna say with black mirrors, like some of the concepts that they're presenting now, I think we're like here. In reality it's like pretty wild. It's not just the example that. We're using with regards to likes and, and shaping human behavior.
Um, but even beyond that, where we're living in this world, our leaders, our media darlings are well known because they're in media. Like the United States Department of Defense, Pete's, Pete Hegseth, uh, moved from broadcast television into this position where he, he's running, you know, the, the, the biggest.
Military on the planet. Um, so it's, it's, it's a funny time because things are definitely disrupted, to say the least, because of technology, content creation, all of it.
Aisha Counts: And it's not always good, right? As you sort of mentioned earlier, just because you can get attention doesn't mean that you're necessarily qualified for a certain position, but it's one of those things where it's sometimes the loudest person in the room is seen as an expert, whether right or wrong. And so if you can stand, it is just a way of standing out, right?
I think about. Random example, if I'm trying to apply for a job on LinkedIn and I have a bunch of followers on LinkedIn and people see my posts all the time, I might stand out more than someone who never posts on LinkedIn, even if they have better qualifications. Just because I'm active and loud and more people are gonna see me, I have more visibility.
So there's pros and cons to that, right? Like that doesn't necessarily mean I'm the best person. I just have a particular skillset in media and getting attention, which is different than the job qualifications, right?
Marc Beckman: It's dangerous. And we're seeing that kind of thing with Tucker Carlson now where he brings people on that are rewriting history and are not experts in history. And I think Joe Rogan is having a little bit of that too. I think it becomes dangerous. So in your opinion, where do you think the biggest pitfall is?
For the creator economy in the short term, where do you think that we're gonna see some, um, stumbling points or, or roadblocks for the creator economy? I.
Aisha Counts: I think it'll be a couple things. One thing I think about as the industry is maturing and getting more professional, I think a lot of things are gonna come out right? Like there was a lot of lawsuits against Mr. Beast for the Beast Game Show people saying that. It was unprofessional. They weren't getting medicine or food or, and it was a number of contestants, right?
It wasn't everyone. But you're gonna start to see things like that where if you're a YouTuber and used to kind of just like flying by the seat of your pants and running things in a certain way, as you get bigger and scale, you're gonna have to start to do kind of more of the Hollywood stuff, right? They have unions and it's a ton of regulations and labor laws and all those sorts of things.
So I think we'll see more of that in the creator economy. More regulation, maybe it's a union or just more things there. Um, so that's gonna be a challenge for folks is, okay, now you're gonna play in the big leagues. But with the big leagues comes a lot of scrutiny. If you see more creator brands launching or folks going public, similar thing, now you have investors that you're answering to.
You have to operate at a different level, at a higher level. If someone like a Mr. Beast goes public, then you have reporting. And so I think all those things are gonna start to come into it. Um, I think there's gonna be a, probably a lot of legislation or more legislation around things like kids', social media use and child safety.
So that's gonna be a challenge for the platforms. It's, it's been a challenge, but it's gonna continue to be a challenge and probably a challenge for a lot of these young kids who are starting on social media or their parents who are creating accounts for them. I think, as we talked about news and journalism, that tension there, uh.
People getting their news and information from content creators who may or may not be qualified to talk about what they're talking about as opposed to traditional media. So traditional media's gonna have to figure out how to grapple with that. That's gonna be a huge challenge. Um, I think those are the sort of the big things, just like regulation news, labor issues, those sorts of things.
Marc Beckman: Yeah, child safety is gonna be huge. My 8-year-old daughter is. In gaming platforms and pulling in content off of TikTok and YouTube all day long. I know that like Meta is really boasting about its child safety, um, uh, current application. But in your opinion, do you think any of the media platforms get it right when it comes to child safety specifically?
Aisha Counts: They all have issues. They all have challenges, and I, and I don't say that in like a dismissive way, like I understand how challenging the, the problem is. I mean, Meta. Like for example, now teens are automatically gonna be in these accounts called teen accounts. So they have more restrictions. They can't send messages to a bunch of random people.
Their accounts are private by default instead of being easily discoverable. There's all these sorts of settings, but that just happened last year. And how many years have we been talking about child safety? Right? So
Marc Beckman: It's wild and, and who's really using it too? How do you enforce it?
Aisha Counts: So they actually force. All teens to go into that. If you're under a certain age now you can lie about your age and that's a whole different issue.
Right? Like if I just go on and, I mean, I, I'm pretty sure I did that when I first had a Facebook account. I said I was 13, I was not 13, whatever it was, right? So they're using AI in different things to try to detect people's ages, but it's a hard problem to solve. So I don't wanna like dismiss it. Then you have Snapchat, which actually has, has been pretty.
Decent at having features. But the problem with them is people were saying, oh, I can send a photo and it'll disappear. So you had kids messaging people to get drugs or messaging all sorts of people, and then the message disappears. Right. And so they've added a lot of features where you can only add someone that's sort of in your network or that's gonna be friends with you.
You can't just message anyone. They'll flag things if it seems like there's an adult or someone trying to be friends with a kid and they have no relation, so they, they have different features, but it's a problem on all the platforms. Same thing on TikTok. Like TikTok live in particular. You have young kids going on there and pedophiles and different people that are trying to groom them or trying to get them to undress.
And so it's a problem across all the platforms, and part of it is they want young users to be on their platforms from a revenue perspective. Those are the people that spend the most time there. So if you start to prevent young people from being on your platform, that impacts your growth, it impacts your revenue.
But some have argued just don't even let kids on there at all. Like even if they're, you know, should a teenager even be on social media, I don't know. So it's, it's a problem across all the platforms.
Marc Beckman: And massive privacy concerns as it relates to their peer group too. Um, I know that there's a bipartisan movement right now in Congress surrounding the Take It Down Act. I think Senators Cruz and Klobuchar. Are leading the charge there. It looks like it's gonna pass. But in that instance, I think it's a reaction.
The American government is reacting to the fact that these victims of essentially, uh, deep fake pornography that was created and disseminated across social media, reached out to the social media platforms for help, but the social media platforms couldn't help. They couldn't get it together. And I'm not suggesting that there was any like.
Uh, wrongdoing by the social media platforms, but to your point, I think there's so much going on right now. They can't keep up with it all. And here we go, like the US government's gonna step in and, and I think, you know, imminently, the Take It Down Act is going to be, uh, passed and become, you know, binding legislation here in the United States.
So it's, um, it's an interesting time. Well, I wanna thank you. You've given us so much of your time. Today, but I'm not letting you off the hook. Every one of my guests ends the show the same way I give a leading sentence, and then my guest finishes, and I'm wondering if you would be kind enough today to play with me a little bit.
Aisha Counts: Let's do it.
Marc Beckman: All right. So in some future day, the creator economy will become,
Aisha Counts: The media industry, it will just be the media industry.
Marc Beckman: It's just gonna totally take over the media industry.
Aisha Counts: Yeah. When we think about I, I think there's not gonna be the separation of this is the creator economy, this is media and entertainment. I think it's just gonna be media and entertainment.
Marc Beckman: I agree. I totally agree. So you'll see like Mr. Beast running MGM.
Aisha Counts: Maybe the next I, I really believe the next big media company. It's gonna come from a creator.
Marc Beckman: I agree.
Aisha Counts: that's where we're at.
Marc Beckman: Is there anything you'd like to add before we wrap it up?
Aisha Counts: No, it's such a fun conversation. Always fun to chat about this space. It's a fun time to be covering this space and to be figuring out how to write about it and just to sort of chronicle the rise and, and everything that's going on. So it's, it's such a fun time to, to be in this space and glad we got to chat about it.
Marc Beckman: Uh, it's such a pleasure to see you and speak with you today. I appreciate it so much.
Aisha Counts: Yeah. Great to, great to see you also.