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Erin Ashley Simon has done many things over the course of her varied career – she started a popular blog called Box of M.E.S.S. (music, entertainment, sports and style) when she was just 17 and parlayed that into multiple roles, including freelance journalist at the Wall Street Journal, digital and TV producer at Revolt TV, and host and producer at Cheddar – although that just scratches the surface of her many endeavors and projects. She embeds herself in the communities she covers, giving her a strong understanding of what those communities want and need. That’s an understanding she wants to convey to brands as well.

Calling herself a culture strategist, Simon works as a creator herself while also consulting with brands behind the scenes, guiding them on how best to navigate the creator economy and helping them to better understand the audiences they are trying to reach.

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Simon is also going to work some of her magic with GEMA to help open up the creator economy to entertainment marketers. She spent some time chatting with Spotlight to share her perspective on how brands and creators can become collaborators and on what creators know that brands don’t. 

 Spotlight: How did you get to where you are now? How did you teach yourself how to do this work? 

 Erin Ashley Simon, culture strategist:  I started at 17 years old. I had a popular blog that covered high school basketball. That kind of started my career, and eventually got me to do sports and event marketing with a basketball magazine called Dime Magazine. From there, I did work with the University of Kentucky as a Division 1 athlete. Then I became a writer for the Wall Street Journal before I made my way into music media with Revolt TV as a TV and digital producer. After that, I did a stint at Cycle Media on the agency side. Eventually I left that and was like, ‘ what do I want to do next’? 

I've always loved video games, and so I thought, ‘is there a way to have a career in the video game space?’ One of my friends was a producer at Cheddar and they were doing a gaming and esports show. They asked me to audition to be a co-host and I landed it. I worked as a producer as well as a co-host for that show. At the time, it was one of the only primary gaming shows on a network. That led to me building a lot of relationships with executives and people in the gaming space, and to building myself as a host and a producer. Eventually, I hosted for pretty much every single gaming company possible. 

I have now moved into this new role where I call myself a creator/operator. I’m a content creator but I also understand the business side. One of the things I focus on when I look at strategizing from a marketing perspective is building trust in a community. I've been able to build trust across hip hop and gaming and other areas that aren’t even my main community or culture. Now I work to help brands and companies and teams effectively build trust within specific areas, whether it's gaming or anime, or just cultural crossovers, and do it in a way that builds affinity for the brand over time versus trying to go viral in the name of getting a lot of views.

I always say it's easy to go viral, but it's much harder to build trust. 

‍Spotlight: How do you go about building that kind of trust?

 Simon: It starts with listening and with understanding the community. One of the things I think is outdated about marketing is focusing on personas and demographics. When we look at, for example, the gaming community and everyone's like, "we want to target gamers.” My take is that the language and the behavior of a gamer who plays an MMORPG (massive multiplayer online role playing game) is going to be different than one who plays a first-person shooter. You can't use the same marketing strategy for all gamers. 

You have to listen. You have to actually play the games or interact with what these gamers specifically like. You have to go to events. You have to talk to them and understand and see what they're looking for, what they want, what they desire. A lot of times when we look at entertainment areas, a lot of the products and the content that they love is tied to their own individual identities, so you have to understand what it is about a specific character or game that connects with them. What are their fondest memories of that character or game? What specific terminology or language do they use? It's really about listening and learning and researching, and you can't just research with data. You actually have to go into the community to understand them, and that will help shape trust. 

The other part of that is providing value without trying to quickly get money from them. You’ve got to give before you can take. I think that’s part of the problem: a lot of brands focus on trying to tap into these avid communities and fandoms because they think they'll spend – and their spending power is high – but these brands then don't provide specific value for that community, and that doesn't build trust. 

You've really got to understand what these audiences are seeking, and provide that value before you can ask for them to spend. That's what it takes to build trust in these spaces.

 Spotlight: So you have to be in and of the community. That takes a lot of time, though. If you're a brand that's wanting to build quickly and isn't really interested in being part of the community, how do you deal with that as you are advising and working with them?

 Simon: If you don't want to spend that time, then you have to hire someone who is of the community. That's where you bring in content creators of all different sizes who are part of the community. Don't just go for the creators who have the most views. In every single community, there's an influencer who influences other influencers. They may not be big, but they are reputable and respected by some of the biggest creators. That's kind of how I viewed myself in the gaming space. 

I think a lot of times when companies do marketing initiatives, they wait until the brief is done to then bring the creators in and be like, now we need your thoughts. No, no, no, no, no. The second you have the idea and you have the basic foundation of the brief, that's when you need to figure out which creators you want to work with and bring them in because they’ve got to be part of that conversation. One, that’s going to help you from making a mistake and looking crazy, and two, you’ll really be able to craft your message in the language of that specific community. 

‍Spotlight: On the flip side, if you're a creator and or an influencer or an influencer of influencers, and a brand wants to work with you, how do you maintain your integrity to make sure that you're maintaining your trust with the community?

Simon: For me, it starts at the contract. You have to establish that we’re going to go about this in a way that’s not going to tarnish the voice that I have in the community while also aligning with the brand itself. I think in the initial conversations when brands are reaching out to creators, they have to relinquish some control. You can’t as a brand control every aspect of work with a creator because then it’s not genuine.

You can establish guardrails though. If a creator knows that they can’t do this or they can’t go there, they can be creative within that guardrail space. You can have guardrails but it can’t be to the point where it’s everything. It needs to be a collaboration between the creator and the brand.

‍Spotlight: You got your start as a journalist. How do you feel like that background has influenced what you do now? 

Simon: One thing I take from journalism is doing proper research and storytelling. 

Like what we just talked about, journalism has guardrails and you have to build within those guardrails. That helps me understand what the main point is of any story I’m telling. It’s helped me set up a foundational aspect to content creation. 

Spotlight: You talk about your mixed-race identity in a lot of your content. How has exploring that identity applied to your work? 

Simon: I think coming from a mixed and multicultural family, there are a few things I connect with. One is understanding that there are customs, traditions and languages that exist within each community but no community is a monolith. For example, a Black person from New York City is not going to always have the same experience or speak the same way as a Black person from Atlanta. It’s understanding that even within these frameworks, cultures and communities, there is no such thing as a monolith and everyone’s personal experiences differ. 

I helped people understand that when people's culture and even their hobbies are connected to their identity, and when you are marketing towards someone's identity, they're going to be more defensive about it, so you have to be very careful with that.

Spotlight: What do you think content creators know that traditional entertainment marketers need to know? 

Simon: There are three things I would say. One is that building trust is the most important thing. Creators have built their audiences over time. I think sometimes that's lost on marketers. The reason why these people have such avid communities is because they have built trust with them over time. 

The second thing that creators understand more than traditional marketers is that you have to be in the community. You have to be engaging with the community. No offense to brands, but no one cares about the brands anymore. No one cares about the sports teams anymore. They care about the individual. Kids are following sports teams based on one player that they like. Creators understand building that trust and having audiences who follow them no matter where they go. People are going to follow a person versus a brand. 

The third thing I would say that creators understand more than brand marketers is that content creation is a science. They aren’t just waking up and thinking ‘I’m going to film this and I’m going to post this.’ There’s a science to creating hooks. They are doing the same thing that traditional platforms are doing, they are just calling it something different. 

I say this very respectfully but I think both sides think that the other side doesn’t fully understand them but they are literally doing the same things. They are just calling it something different. Both sides should understand that no one is doing anything new or different, it’s just that the way they do these things is modified for their respective platforms.