Creator Edge Media- A Jace Norman Company
Also, from Forbes:
How This Gen Z Nickelodeon Star Is Helping Brands Connect With His Generation
Millennials and Gen Zers are the generations that created the term “influencer.” Before the Internet, people who held true influence were usually celebrities, television personalities, pop stars and professional athletes. And while those personalities remain influential, today we have added more categories: YouTubers, Instagrammers, Twitch streamers and viral bloggers.
The Internet has allowed anyone with something to say and a laptop to share their voice with the world. Twenty years ago, there was no such thing as “becoming an influencer.” Career paths were essentially set in stone, and your opportunities in life were limited by your physical surroundings. In 1997, there was no easy option for you to expand outside your small town, bring your talents to the Internet and go your own way.
Even 10 years ago, in 2007, admitting that you liked to post videos of yourself on YouTube was embarrassing—it wasn’t considered cool. The world hadn’t adopted the idea of becoming an influencer yet. Today, it’s a young person’s dream job: being creative, engaging with an active audience and getting paid to do so.
As a result, influencer marketing has grown exponentially as an industry. More brands are starting to realize that the single most effective way to reach today’s hyper-engaged consumers is to allow the Internet’s favorite content creators to tell branded stories for them. Influencer marketing tends to be more authentic and more creative than traditional efforts.
However, as brands have begun to move bigger portions of their advertising budgets into the hands of influencers, they are realizing there is an art to influencer marketing; they are starting to recognize that the most important part of a successful campaign is allowing the influencers to stay true to themselves.
Jace Norman, a 17-year-old Nickelodeon star with over 2 million followers on Instagram alone, has experienced this particular pain point. I had the opportunity to chat with Norman about the mistakes brands make when working with influencers.
When I asked him what he thinks adults don’t understand about Generation Z and connecting with younger generations, he said, “I think that adults want to do it in the only way they know how—and that’s TV. They want to transfer TV to the Internet, following the same model, and I don’t think that’s going to work as well as they think. With influencers, and influencer marketing, it’s all about integrating. Older generations misunderstand how smart some of these people actually are, and you can’t just throw ads in front of people’s faces. As soon as someone thinks they’re being sold to, they’re gone.”
Norman went on to share that one of the glaring problems on social media, specifically influencer marketing, is when influencers with loyal audiences end up compromising themselves through the content they create on behalf of a brand.
“I recently teamed up with my good friend Michael Gruen to launch Creator Edge Media—specifically because we were tired of seeing influencers not know how to effectively partner with brands, and brands not know how to work effectively with influencers,” said Norman. “We took it upon ourselves to solve that problem and connect brands with well-known social media influencers. We wanted to bridge that gap where people would actually care about the product being talked about in the post, and help influencers learn how to integrate it into their brand without being overly promotional.”
Michael Gruen, the co-founder of Creator Edge Media, is a 19-year-old former NBA agent with an impressive resume for his age. At just 13 years old, he started as a volunteer for NBA players’ charities. He created a management company at 15, where he marketed athletes across all four major sports.
He then went on to become the Senior Vice President of NBPA- and FIBA-certified agency 3PT Sports Management, acting as an agent’s assistant scouting talent. With those skill sets, his experience as a recruiter set the stage for what he does today—sorting through hundreds of Instagram accounts and other social profiles, searching for the next big influencer. He attributes a significant amount of his early success to his mentor and former partner, NBA agent Zachary Charles, and former Mets GM Jim Duquette.
“Without them, I’d be working a nine-to-five right now,” said Gruen. “Jim Duquette is the one who taught me how to negotiate. Every time I was going into a negotiation room with a team or brand, I would call him and talk through my rationale as to why I thought X player should make Z amount. Being a former GM, he would then argue it out with me like it was a real negotiation. We ended up doing a mock negotiation to the students of Chapman Law School, teaching many of the same lessons I learned very early on.”
Gruen explained that how brands currently interact and partner with influencers is all over the board. Some brands know how to give influencers creative freedom, but many do not.
“What makes Creator Edge Media different is that we allow our clients to retain more creative control. Most of our clients are actors, so social media is really a side job for them, which means they’d rather make a bit less money to have a team that understands their brand quality over the long term,” explained Gruen. “This is where having someone like Jace—someone who is known in the industry to produce quality YouTube and Instagram content—allows people to know off the bat that we are the real deal, and ready to win on their behalf. Currently, most agencies represent brands as opposed to celebrities. We only represent the talent, which gives us a lot more of the ability to be selective.”
What’s impressive about the work Gruen and Norman are doing together is that they are representing Generation Z by taking the lead—instead of waiting for someone else to represent them. Influencer marketing has only been around for a handful of years, and it has already changed the field in significant ways.
The marketers who will be helping brands connect with younger demographics most effectively over the next few years will be members of Generation Z—because they understand what young people want to see on the Internet.
--Ends--
Also, from J-14:
Exclusive: Jace Norman's New Company Helps Social Media Influencers Build Their Brands
You may know Jace Norman best from Henry Danger, but what you may not know is that he is actually quite the businessman behind the scenes. Yep, that's right. Jace just launched a company alongside his older brother Xander Norman and professional sports agent Mike Gruen, and it goes by the name of Creator Edge Media.
J-14 caught up with the star to get the inside scoop on what Creator Edge Media is all about, and it is safe to say he has a lot in store. Creator Edge Media is a marketing agency that enables social media influencers to deliver quality branded content, and Jace exclusively spilled how the idea for the company came about.
The Nickelodeon star exclusively told us, "Creator Edge Media, was sort of a brand for me and friends. I mean, it's gonna grow past that, but right now, originally that's what the goal was. I saw a lot of these influencers who post their ad and they don't really have a good integration into the brand. It's just holding up the product real quick or just like saying 'Hey, buy this!' real quick. Our goal is to seamlessly integrate these brands with the creators or the influencers – whatever you wanna call them – in a way that doesn't hurt the eye of the people who follow them in the first place."
Jace got the idea simply by the way he consumes social content and recognizing the fact that brands' advertising could be done in a more natural way – a way that is more inviting to the audience.
"I kind of saw where [social media] was going in general. In a few years, that's where we're headed in general, and I knew a lot of people being in that space for a few years now. So, I just teamed up with my friend, Michael, and my brother and we just decided to basically get it started. We've been working on it for a while now and we finally launched," he continued.
What's also cool about the company is that some of the creators he is working with are fellow members of the Nickelodeon fam (Sean Ryan Fox, Casey Simpson and Thomas Kuc – to name a few). Aside from assisting his peers in growing their brands, he will also be mentoring newcomers like Chase Liefeld – who, by the way, is basically Jace's twin.
"Obviously, the whole thing about Nickelodeon [and Disney Channel] is for a lot people like Selena Gomez, I mean you go down the list, Ariana Grande and stuff, it's really a great experience. You get to learn a lot as kids and then, eventually, you want to lodge off into another thing. I'm not necessarily saying that I want to push them into singing or whatever, I'm just trying to help them let go. Like me, I want to do this kind of company and that's where I'm going right now or whatever. I'm just helping them take what they have, take what they've learned, take their followings that they have, and go wherever they want to," Jace told J-14. "I'm totally here to mentor them and help them get through it on a personal level, not just a business level."
Part of the job for Jace will be finding talent to work with, and his acting experience has helped him learn what to look for when seeking out creators to join Creator Edge Media.
"For me, I like to look at what they're like off-camera. A lot of these people you'll see that they look pretty on cameras, but behind the scenes, there's not as entertaining, I guess, or charismatic. You can really tell some of these guys who've really made it big, people that I've met, you can tell that behind the scenes, they're just as capable and just as fun and just as charismatic and just as smart. It's really about what goes on behind the scenes for me. And, obviously, there's some very talented people that you can just tell they've got it. Then, you go from there," he said.
It goes a bit further than that though. Jace explained that what he looks for in an actor is not necessarily what he looks for in a social media personality. There are separate skills that you need for each, which he needs to be able to identify going forward in Creator Edge Media.
"I actually think they're very different. For social media, specifically, you have to have very good taste. You have to know where things are going. Being very tapped in is what makes a lot of these people successful. Knowing what's trendy, knowing what's popping at the time and going after that, or even creating something that goes viral. It's a very taste intuitive thing that makes these people very relevant. As far as acting goes, acting's a whole different ball game. These influencers, you wanna call them, they're brand new. So, it's kind of exciting. This is a new frontier almost in entertainment and acting has been going on for thousands of years," Jace explained.
We can't wait to see where this new career move takes him!
--Ends--
Also, from J-14:
Exclusive: Jace Norman Says His Company Is Nothing Like Team 10 And Jake Paul Seems Unfazed
Jace Norman may have grown up as a child actor, but now he's putting on his metaphorical business suit and turning himself into quite the entrepreneur. Creator Edge Media is a marketing company the Nickelodeon star just launched alongside his brother Xander Norman and business sports professional Michael Gruen. Their mission is to help social media influencers build their brands, which... hold up, doesn't that sound a little like Team 10? No, and let us further explain why.
While Jace totally commends Jake Paul's team for reaching success in their own way, he wants it to be known that he's not trying to do what they do. We chatted with Jace and he exclusively told us what he's doing differently business-wise.
"I think that Jake Paul, the leader of that, is kind of run by his ego. Everything revolves around him," he told J-14. "They're doing a good job, and they're very successful – but at the end of the day that's Jake Paul's thing."
When we stopped by Jake's NYC Team 10 pop-up shop, he told us himself that other influencer groups (like Creator Edge Media and CloutGang) aren't on his radar. While he didn't name Creator Edge Media specifically, it's safe to say he isn't a supporter.
Jake exclusively spilled to J-14, "They’re definitely copying Team 10, but good luck."
So let it be known – Creator Edge Media is not trying to be Team 10. Why? Because while Jace is big in the industry, he's really just there to mentor talent rather than be the face of the company in the same way Jake is for Team 10.
"I'm not trying to be Jake Paul. I'm not trying to do what he's doing. I think that he's running it from a place of 'What can I do to help me?' 'How can I get my brand up?' It's not really a company, it's more of a 'Let's support Jake Paul.' I'm trying more of a company. I'm not trying to be Jake Paul. I'm trying to make a company."
So sure, Jace will be helping other content creators build their brands – but he won't be involved in any wild stunts, like the ones Team 10 is known for.
"I'm not gonna set couches on fire in my pool," he added.
So there you have it – totally different companies with totally different goals.
--Ends--
More Nick: Nickelodeon USA To Premiere 'The Adventures Of Kid Danger' In January 2018!
Originally posted: Thursday, November 30, 2017.
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