On a special Cannes Lions edition of &quot;Strictly Business,&quot; Fox Entertainment CEO Rob Wade explains why the company is going all-in on the creator economy with the launch of the Fox Creator Studios division to partner with promising creators who are eager to grow. Josh Richards, one of the first wave of creators to align with Fox, explains the appeal of the effort to bridge old and new school in media.<br>See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Strictly Business Cannes Lions Edition: Fox's Rob Wade and Billy Parks Hope to Bring Scale to the Creator Economy

Strictly Business

# Full Transcript

**Podcast:** Strictly Business

## Participants

- **Cynthia Littleton** (Variety)
- **Rob Wade** (Fox Entertainment)
- **Billy Parks** (Fox Creator Studios)
- **Josh Richards** (Self/Creator)

## Transcript

Welcome to Strictly Business, Variety's weekly podcast featuring conversations with industry leaders about the business of media and entertainment. I'm Cynthia Littleton, co-editor and chief of Variety. Today's episode of Strictly Business is a special bonus edition recorded live at the Cannes Lion Festival of Creativity being held this week in Cannes, France. This event is overrun with discussion about marketing and the challenge of reaching consumers and how AI is changing everything.

Everybody is also talking about the influence of creators and how brands are flocking to these grassroots pitch people who in some cases can reach hundreds of thousands if not millions of engaged consumers in a matter of hours. The Fox Corporation made a calculated bet in this area in January by launching the Fox Creator Studios division. The goal is to work with promising creators to keep them humming along on their native digital platforms, not Fox channels.

They want to help them make more money as YouTube and TikTok native entrepreneurs, but Fox also wants to package up all of that creator inventory and sell it for a premium to the largest ad buyers around the world. The push into the creator economy has been led by Fox Entertainment CEO Rob Wade, who has been looking at this space for years. The first person Wade recruited for the effort was Billy Parks, who is head of Fox Creator Studios.

Parks was most recently working with the VC firm Slow Ventures on creator-led prospects. And before that, he was an operating partner with Churnin Group. Rob Wade, Billy Parks, and I sat down on June 22nd as CanLion got off to a busy start. Fox is betting that it will be able to drive demand and offer the biggest advertisers easy access to premium creator content.

This is crucial to the business plan, and that's why Wade and Parks were on the Quaset this year telling their story. And while we were talking, a creator who has signed up to work with Fox on distribution and ad sales stopped into the room, so we didn't miss the chance to hear directly from a digital native. Josh Richards is a very determined 24-year-old from a smallish town outside of Montreal. He's lived his life in front of social media cameras since he was 13.

In our conversation, Richard lays out quite a vision for how he intends to expand his brand and expand into other areas of content in the coming years. It's a fascinating glimpse of how Gen Z and Gen Alpha think about media and business of all kinds. Rob Wade, CEO of Fox Entertainment, Billy Parks, head of Fox Creator Studios.

Thank you so much for having me here in your Fox Clubhouse setting where we are looking out on the Bay of Cannes and the Côte d'Azur is living up to its name today. Yeah, it's not bad. It's great to b...

Strictly Business Cannes Lions Edition: Fox's Rob Wade and Billy Parks Hope to Bring Scale to the Creator Economy

Transcript

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Strictly Business Cannes Lions Edition: Fox's Rob Wade and Billy Parks Hope to Bring Scale to the Creator Economy

Transcript

Built for investment professionals

Every day you wait, your competitors are findingedge in conversations you're not hearing.

Every day you wait, your competitors are finding
edge in conversations you're not hearing.