For Defy Media's Andy Signore, Building a Community is Building a Brand 05.05.2016 Andy Signore, Defy Media SVP of content, knows from nerds. He counts on them to build his brands, which include Screen Junkies, the digital home of Honest Trailers and Kevin Smith's Fatman on Batman. Both Signore and Smith will be on hand at PromaxBDA: The Conference in New York City June 14-16. With Screen Junkies, Signore created not only a YouTube channel but a digital brand that boasts nearly 5.4 million subscribers and growing. Last November, Screen Junkies Plus was born, a subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) service with exclusive content and partnerships with Kevin Smith-level talent. The ventures aims to take the brand to the next level. In a conversation with Daily Brief, Signore talked about everything from how excited his inner teenager is over getting to work with Smith, to how building a community organically leads to brand expansion. You're working with Kevin Smith! It's very surreal to be texting with Kevin. If you told the teenage version of me, I'd be very excited that's where things are going. How did it come about? As we're building the Screen Junkies brand, we're asking, how do we go bigger? Who do we want to associate ourselves with? We've been successful as a digital brand, but how do we bring in talent that can bring in other people from other mediums? Kevin was always at the top of my list. When he came in for a general meeting, I could just tell he likes being a nerd. That's what we connected on. He was a big fan of Screen Junkies and Honest Trailers and wasn't faking it. That obviously helped. We were a few weeks from launching our new Plus programming, and I had this idea for a toy unboxing show. He didn't really know the toy unboxing format was really successful. He said, 'I would love to unbox toys. You crazy?' I thought he was kidding: if you want to do it, we'll do it. 'I'm in, let's do it.' It basically happened as quickly as that. He really wanted to be in this space, he wanted to build out Fatman on Batman, which we're helping him with, developing a weekly show with us. What are you doing to expand the brand? Screen Junkies has become a strong brand in itself, of which I'm proud and excited. But more people know us because of Honest Trailers, which has reached beyond digital. How do we take that brand that people respect and admire and show the faces behind it? How do we bring that community together? We're building a community. There's a lot of superhero movie news, but there isn't an ESPN of movies. Where you come in with real experts, and discuss [movies] in the detail that ESPN does. That's the vibe we're trying to create. I'm learning our fans don't have a lot of other nerdy fans to talk to. We interact with them on live shows and it becomes a community that's open and friendly about discussing TV and film. Screen Junkies Plus is a huge initiative in expanding the brand. How has Screen Junkies Plus performed thus far? It's been very successful amongst the fans and building up new ones. This was the perfect opportunity to give fans more content daily: interactive, live and more premium stuff like with Kevin. We've seen tremendous results. The most recent show we did, which was huge for us, was our "Knocking Dead" series, a Walking Dead after-show that had our own Honest Trailers edge. There's a lot of after-shows, but we didn't just come up live and talk. We came up with bits, segments and research. It became an honest place where fans could come and complain, which a lot of other shows don't do. We even got Chris Hardwick to phone in on our finale. Some of his fans give him a hard time, because 'oh you can't be honest on Talking Dead' and he addressed that. It brought in a lot of new members. We have a new Game of Thrones show called "Watching Thrones." We're trying to react quickly and topically to what the audience wants to react to. How do you promote Screen Junkies Plus, "Fatman on Batman," etc.? With "Fatman on Batman," we've been working closely with Kevin. He's leading that on his own, but we chime in and help with promotion. He also has a big rolodex of people to attract special guests. Making sure Kevin's fans know it exists on Screen Junkies' platform is key. Kevin will promote it on his own platforms. We're partnering up with other people in our space that we really like. The Jeremy Jahns and Chris Stuckmanns who have huge audiences of their own. We've cross-pollinated before, but investing in them to do exclusive content creates a better value. We don't want to keep hitting our audience on YouTube over the head, but we want to make sure they know what the value is. So we find more organic opportunities. For example, we were doing our honest trailer for Game of Thrones Vol. 2, a perfect opportunity to say, by the way you can come watch us breakdown honestly each episode each week as the new season starts over on "Watching Thrones." It's all about creatively figuring out how to connect with the brands that we know our audience likes and letting them organically plug it, as well as build the content that they want to see. What makes Defy Media's content stand out? How has the landscape changed since you launched Screen Junkies? You need a standout show and [you need to] make sure you have something [for viewers] to come back to. A lot of people think it happens in a month and it's like, 'Oh we did it, it didn't work.' It's a long road. With Honest Trailers and Awe Me, it's building a library that's evergreen that you can come back and see and want to watch more of, coupled with following what YouTube's doing with their algorithm. It changes every year and the audience shifts. It's much different and tougher nowadays. But now and then, content always reigns supreme. If you have a good show, it's funny and you're continuing to do it on a regular basis, that typically rises to the top. If you do five episodes and give up, it might not find the audience. Then you have to build around that programming. Movie Fights was important because it allowed us to be in front of the camera and start the discussion with our audience. That's what helped build the brand even higher. It allowed us to bring in more guests and more personalities from our world. Who are your dream partners for Defy's Creators program? We're obviously always looking for good creators in any and all facets. Not just for Screen Junkies, but for Clevver and Smosh and everything we're doing. My role is shifting to help launch the Screen Junkies entertainment brand. The dream is [to work with] the Patton Oswalts of the world, or the Tarantinos. How do we get those types of people more involved? It's not just about the vloggers, like myself. How do we get respected filmmakers like Kevin involved in the discussion? So it becomes bigger than just us. We have a fanbase and I'm proud of it, and happy to be a pseudo-celebrity. I have a problem even saying that, because the celebrities are the Spielbergs and J.J. Abrams. We just had the Russo brothers in. When they talk about how they're fans, and how they Honest Trailer-proofed Civil War, it blows my mind. The more fans we get, the more serious people will take us and the more interesting the conversations. This is just the beginning of Andy Signore for Daily Brief readers. Register for The Conference 2016 to see Signore, Smith and more June 14-16. [All images courtesy of Defy Media].