During Advertising Week Latam 2024, Secret Media Network‘s VP Media, Miriam Cacho, talked with Jazmín Martínez and Mauricio Cabrera, who created Food Police and Juanfutbol, respectively.
The topic was very interesting: how content creators, brands and media can coexist in the same industry. The title of the panel was: ¡Qué guajolota! How media and content creators coexist in this impossible recipe.
Our speakers shared their experiences, some of the challenges they face, but also striking solutions. Here are some of the most interesting points:
A toilet paper doesn’t change your life! The ethics of content creators
Jazmín told us that she has had to generate her own code of ethics throughout her career -which already spans 10 years of experience in the media- and that she uses it to consider collaborations with brands and media.
For her, it is essential not to lie, not to say “nonsense” when you are hired to advertise something and to assume your responsibility to your audience (no matter its size).
It is also important, she added, to be transparent about what you do want/can advertise and why. She said she only collaborates with brands that she consumes and that involve her in the process of creating a campaign.
One thing she stressed was that marketing and advertising agencies need to be more aware of the costs involved in creating a video or covering an event, as well as the reach they can achieve with a collaboration with a content creator.
“They don’t know that they have to be paid for a video, they don’t know that they have to be paid to cover an event, they don’t even know the scope of things that can be achieved,” he said about content creators who still don’t know how to monetize their work.
The content creator as a personal brand and the media as platforms to create solutions.
Mauricio (Maca) considered that the media have the opportunity to become a collective of creators and offer themselves as a platform to gather talent, collaborate, make visible and give veracity.
Likewise, he added, they can be the hub where content creators and brands come together to generate interesting and innovative proposals.
Media that only have one recognizable face, he said, can become dependent on that person. On the contrary, if you have collaborators with in-house and external creators, the media becomes stronger and more diversified.
An important point in favor of content creators, said Maca, is that they are much more consistent and much more specialized. Plus they work more honestly and transparently with a niche, and are less opportunistic.
“Many times it’s not that they (the media) are convinced to defend a cause, but they see that this is what makes an impact on social networks and then they jump on board to defend a cause that maybe they don’t even agree with,” he explained.
“(The creators) have an understanding of the channels and a better way of speaking and they have earned that,” Miriam added.
“In addition to a freshness and a credibility, there is an issue of style and audience style that the media has lost.”
Do media and entertainment companies have to reinvent themselves to keep up with content creators?
Not necessarily, they agreed. One of the things that the big companies have not yet managed to do, they said, is to completely let go of institutionalism.
And that resistance, said Maca, is detrimental to the creativity and spontaneity for which content creators are known. Of course, said Jazmín, a strategy and some rules are needed, but ideally, the media should trust their collaborators.
In this sense, Maca stressed that there are very few projects that seek to achieve cultural relevance by assuming themselves as a content brand, instead of being a traditional media.
He recalled, for example, that the successful reality show La Casa de los Famosos achieved its main success on TikTok and many times with audience-generated content. “How do you get everyone talking about you, that’s the challenge!”.
And how do you eat this guajolota?
The panelists agreed that there is a mutual learning task between brands, media and content creators.
Creators currently enjoy a large audience and generate communities around what they publish, while the media continue to lose credibility and readership.
Miriam pointed out that creators can learn from the media how to transform their former hobby into a business.