A New Home for Digital Celebrities: The Victorious App

Forging a connection between internet-borne stardom and digital marketing just became so much easier. A new start-up, called Victorius is providing creators (individuals and bands made famous by You Tube and other social media channels) with a smart method for leveraging their fan base and social media presence. Victorius provides these creators with the technology to make their own customized app. The goal of this app is to bring the creator’s disparate online communities onto one platform to facilitate rich creator/fan interaction while making available a variety of content such as tour dates, merchandise sales, videos, music, and in-app purchases. In return for providing the technology, Victorius receives half of the ad revenue generated. In the launch material for Victorous there is also a reference to helping creators identify other income streams for the creator through the app.

This entrepreneurial concept was founded by, not surprisingly, three former You tube executives. After seeing the success of digital stars, presumably those like Todrick Hall (known for creating satirical music videos and trailers), Michelle Phan (beauty adviser), and Boyce Avenue (boy band) they saw a problem:

“These creators have audiences that are enormous but fragmented,” says Bing Chen, Victorious’s chief creative officer, a YouTube alum. “They want to be able to control their own destiny.”

In response to this problem, the founders responded by developing a platform that would enable creator communities to have one home (the app) without burdening the creator with the difficult and costly task of developing an interactive app on their own.

Should the Victorius model become a success, it would give digital advertisers a new channel through which to reach a very niche group of users, therefore allowing advertisers to target much more effectively. Victorius would also allow advertisers to know and understand users of a certain community much more deeply by essentially following the app users as the users follow the content creators. For instance, if Victorius develops an app for a band made popular on You Tube, advertisers could gain initial engagement with the followers of this band through direct advertising through the app. As a next step advertisers could also create additional points of contact with users through presence at live events of the band, through merchandise being sold on the app, through sponsoring a recording, or even helping the band to launch a new product or initiative. For creators, the benefits are clear. By removing the heavy financing and know-how associated with developing an app, creators will be able to more impactfully build their business, enhance their brand and concentrate on interacting with their fan base. Victorius seems to have identified a win-win-win opportunity (for fans, creators, and advertisers) that could serve as a powerful model for online connectivity and interactivity in the road ahead.