Marketers Share Fandom Strategies at Variety Summit — SkimNews
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- TikTok sees over 12 million TV and film posts per day from users, with global head of entertainment Dawn Yang highlighting a participatory co-creation culture at Variety's Entertainment and Technology Summit in Los Angeles on Thursday.
- Lionsgate hires actual fans to create its TikTok content (called "edits") rather than trying to replicate fan-made work internally, said global head of digital marketing Briana McElroy, noting the contributors are often teens and young adults.
- Pinterest partnered with Warner Bros. on a "Practical Magic 2" pop-up featuring tarot readings, custom candles, and tea blending — tapping Gen Z interest in crystal meanings and herbal apothecaries, said global head of consumer marketing Sara Pollack.
- Spotify's Jenny Haggard cited platform data showing a third of older Gen Zs stream 100% of two-hour-long podcast episodes, arguing the cohort isn't allergic to long-form content but to "shitty content," and that life stage predicts behavior better than birth year.
- Archrival chief growth officer Ben Harms said brands winning the next 10 years will build ecosystems of human connection that go "far beyond attention" and noise.
- AMC Global Media CMO Kim Granito said marketers must create layered, "choose-your-own-adventure" pathways for fans whose engagement ranges from casual spinoff viewers to Comic Con cosplayers.
Why it matters: The panel reveals legacy entertainment companies ceding creative control to fans — Lionsgate literally paying teenagers to make its TikTok ads — while platforms like Pinterest monetize fandom through experiential partnerships rather than impressions. For studios, the practical implication is that participatory marketing outperforms polished replication, and the long-form-content-is-dead narrative for younger audiences doesn't survive Spotify's own data.
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