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‘With Amaze, we are connecting content creators with fans in more personable ways’

On November 27, 2021, Temple Company, a global full-service creative company, through its digital arm will be launching an innovative product that uses technology to enable entertainment.

Ahead of the launch, Ebunoluwa Feyisetan, head of products (Digital), Temple Company, talks to Obinna Emelike on the first digital products of the company, creators’ economy, influencers, their fans among other products of the company.

Who really is the product manager?

I am Ebunoluwa Feyisetan and I am the head of products (Digital) at the Temple Company.

In the past four years I have been in the technology space where I have been building products in hospitality, education, health and music.

Now, I am in the Temple Company to build products that enable entertainment.

When you say tech products in the entertainment industry, what are they really?

When I tell people I work as a product manager at the Temple Company, they ask what kind of product. Our products are technology-based that enable, enhance and offer better access to entertainment.

Of course, we have seen the way technology has disrupted so many markets; in finance we have fintech, in health we have healthtech, in insurance we have insurtech, among others.

Over the years entertainment has been more of analogue, but slowly we have seen how technology has been introduced with streaming like Spotify and Apple Music, among other offerings.

Now you do not have to insert a cassette into a player to listen to music, from your phone you can listen to music. Even the way Netflix came on board, you do not have to watch movies on your television, you can now stream unlimited from other devices.

What is Temple Digital all about?

So, slowly technology is beginning to disrupt the entertainment space for good and over the past five years, the Temple Company has grown and has a very strong company within the creative agency space.

So, we thought, what are the current needs of creators within entertainment and how can we leverage the power of technology to meet these needs and create more values for them. That is the reason we set up Temple Digital.

Are you looking to tap into the creator economy with your digital arm?

Yes. The creator economy is the kind of business we build around people who create content within music, art, sport, TV and more.

These are the people called creators and over the years we have seen that their influences have been restricted to just television; when you see their performances. But with social media, these creators now have access to a larger audience, who are consuming their contents.

But towards the end of 2019 and 2020, when the pandemic broke, many of the creators who had leveraged on TV and live performances to make money were constrained and they needed another means to reach out to their audiences and to make more money.

With that in mind, platforms like Instagram and TikTok became predominant such that the creators started thinking of how to engage the audience so that they will not lose them; hence they started creating content to engage the audience.

As the creators did that, especially during the pandemic, people started spending more time on their phones, consuming the contents, and the followers of the creators started to grow more.

As the followers grow, the creators saw an opportunity to monetize their fans and brands began to approach them, requesting to leverage on their influence to access their audience, as well as to pay the creators to help them push their products to their audience, who fall in their target market.

Even the creators who do other things by the side now see the opportunity to monetize their followers.

There is a statistics that says that the creator economy is worth over $100 billion. At a point where these people begin to monetize their followers, they move from just being creators to being influencers because they can affect the purchasing decisions of their followers.

So, they can influence either because of their authority, position, relationship they have or because of their knowledge. They are called influencers because they can affect the purchasing decisions of another.

Currently, the influencer market is worth $8 billion and projected to rise to about $15 billion in 2023. So, it is becoming a big market.

So, we started thinking of how we can feed into the market and create values beyond what it is being used at the moment.

Also, PwC released a report that Nigeria is the fastest growing Entertainment and Media market in the world. So, there are many values that need to be tapped.

You are about launching Amaze, your first digital product, what is exciting about the product?

Having realized that we have celebrities that we manage, and there is a pool of fans who want to connect personally with these celebrities, it offered us the opportunity to create a platform for the two to meet.

But prior to social media, there is this kind of relationship that exists between the celebrities and their fans where the closest you can get to a celebrity you love is through television, you see their movies and you listen to their songs.

When social media came in, the fans felt closer to the celebrities because they could see the pictures online, they felt they are part of their celebrities’ lives and could connect with them because you could like their posts and comment and be happy when they respond to your comment.

But social media has always been one-sided and we felt like we have a set of celebrities who want to monetize their fans, they want to make more money and they have been doing that, especially during the pandemic.

As they want to make more money from their fans, there are also fans who want to connect personally with the celebrities. We realized that we can use technology to bring this together and that is how we came about our first product called Amaze.

The goal of Amaze is to connect fans with their favourite celebrities or influencers in a more personable way.

We also noticed that these influencers have come to understand that it is not all about growing the numbers but to build a stronger community and that happens only when you relate personally with your followers who are willing to pay, which is the end goal.

With fans longing to connect and celebrities seeking to build stronger communities, we thought of having a product that will bring the two together. That product is Amaze, which is our first technology product and we are launching it on November 28, 2021.

Have you done a test-run before the unveiling?

Yes, we have done some tests running in-house, within the Temple Company and with a few celebrities.

What will Temple gain with the new product?

We are creating opportunities for our influencers. We have different levels of influencers; we have nano, micro and macro influencers.

It may be an influencer who has 5000 followers, but who are active and who love the influencer’s content. So, we are helping the influencer to create an opportunity to make more money. As they are monetizing their fans, they are making more money for themselves, their fans are happy and the influencers are building stronger communities.

Also, we are empowering influencers with the product.

What other products do we expect from Temple Digital?

We have a roadmap of products within our portfolio. Currently, we have a Value Added Service (VAS) license we want to leverage to create products surrounding the VAS because VAS connects with telecommunication companies and more.

We have seen USSD codes that leverage VAS that enable payment. That is one of the uses of VAS at the moment. So, we are creating products around VAS that enable entertainment.

We are also leveraging our VAS license to create products that will service people that use feature phones, people that may not have much access to the internet, and we are going to create a product that will service them within the entertainment space.

We are also looking at distribution for artistes who want to distribute their music. We are also working on a new product that will enable and simplify that process.

But it is not streaming because streaming is the end of the funnel. After an artiste writes a song and produces it, they have to move their songs from that point to the store and the idea is that you want to get your songs in as many stores as possible.

We are going to create a product that will simplify that process as well.

Why infusion of technology in your entertainment products?

It is because any company that refuses to adopt technology in its operation and processes will lag. Technology is driving change across the globe and if you want to be at the forerunner, which is Temple’s goal to be the central hub for everything entertainment and the way we can drive value to the maximum is by leveraging the power of technology.

We intend to be the forerunners and still the forerunners and that is why we are leveraging technology.

How affordable is Amaze?

In developing our products, we are considering the price point because you do not want to create a product that nobody can pay for.

So, as we create the products, we consider the purchasing power of our target audience, especially for Amaze because we are going to have many influencers, those at top tier, mid tier and so on. So, it is going to be priced at different rates and there will be something for everybody on Amaze.

Credit: Business Day

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