Platforms and Personas: The Fundamentals (Issue 1)

Hey, it’s Arlesha!

Today I’m diving into the first installment of a thematic newsletter multi-issue series called “Platforms and Personas”. Throughout the coming weeks, this series will cement and bring color to a philosophy of mine—the notion that Talent who build & design Platforms create sustainable value for themselves and the brands & properties who engage with them. Each article within this series will uncover further insights as I share my insider POVs on this philosophy.

Much like the term “strategy,” platform has become one of the most ambiguous words used in the entertainment business. Once a Creative or Talent (personality, entertainer, athlete) captures one fan, they automatically become an owner of a “platform.”  Platform is also often used as an overarching term for the distribution channels a Talent influences–like his/her social media channel or podcast channel.

In the context of Champion Takes and the work that fuels Champion Strategies(.co), it’s useful to define my usage of Platform. Let’s get into the fundamentals…

The Champion Definition of Platform

A Platform is the foundation of a talent’s business or brand ventures centered around a flagship or signature intellectual property (IP). Depending on the talent, Platforms can take many forms; It can be a broader foundation for multiple projects under one’s name–or an ecosystem of content, products or ventures built around an identity. A Platform is an ecosystem where the brand or talent’s unique identity, messaging, and value propositions come together to drive sustainable growth.

To use an example that revists my past experience developing & managing Platform initiatives as Sr. Director of Strategic Partnerships & Development at SC30,Inc founded by Steph Curry—let’s take a page from his brand platform UNDERRATED. Within this platform brand are youth-amateur basketball & golf programming and content, etc (e.g. the Underrated documentary released on Apple TV+).

For a visual example on the entertainment front–let’s use the visual reference contributed by Dan Runcie, Founder of Trapital (below). His analysis & interpretation of Actress and Writer Issa Rae’s Hoorae platform illustrates the intricacies that tie & leverage Issa’s content, brand and business ventures into one interdependent system. It’s a great reference of an ecosystem that leverages a variety of touchpoints, activations and propositions to generate revenue and growth for Issa in diversified fashion. 

At the core of Issa Rae’s platform ecosystem is the leveraging of content (HBO show Insecure, etc) and audiences to drive engagement & consumption of consumer products and other entertainment assets.  At the core of Stephen Curry’s ever-maturing platform ecosystem, is the leveraging of legacy (his story: a player who defied the odds to become the greatest shooter of all-time) and his passion in merging sport with purpose (“elevating the under” is his brand platform tagline). 

With such examples, these platforms are developed by talent who first successfully leveraged their Personas.

Let’s go into the differences between leveraging Persona versus Platform.

The Difference Between Persona & Platform

Let’s talk about Persona within the context of what we’ve all been hearing about these past few years in the sports industry: Name, Image, Likeness (NIL). Since the integration of NIL in today’s collegiate sports business– allowing for collegiate athletes to monetize and earn financial rewards in the form of endorsements– it’s become the latest industry iteration of persona-leveraging. 

Those who transact in the greater sports & entertainment landscape know that monetizing name, image and likeness is not a new concept, per se–albeit “new” in the college landscape. While it was never framed as “NIL”, leveraging and monetizing persona serves as the backbone of the sports & entertainment industry, from 1.0 to its 3.0 modernization (see article “What Makes a Champion Take” for the breakdown of 1.0 to 3.0). Leveraging and monetizing persona is the monetization backbone within the entertainment industry at-large, from musicians to actors to athletes to media personalities.

It’s the PERSON a brand does business with. It’s the image featured in a commercial advertisement. It’s the likeness that’s captured in a voiceover within your favorite mobile telecom commercial. Leveraging Persona is essentially–endorsements– and it’s a multi-billion dollar economy. 

What’s soon to catch up in value is PLATFORM. In my working with prolific athletes through the years, I’ve seen the phenomenon of how market impact is expanded & enhanced not just by the leveraging of name, image and likeness but by the creation of owned programs, products & platforms that serve as solutions for the market and the stakeholders who oversee such markets. Platforms will become more valuable than persona alone–not just solely based on revenue, but in market impact and sustainability. Stick with me here….

Platform Will Become The Epicenter of the Sports & Entertainment Business

If you observe the trajectory of an individual entertainer, athlete or personality there’s an interesting phenomenon that manifests over time while in the spotlight.This phenomenon involves the hitting of what I call a “persona plateau.” This phenomenon has been certified by practitioners and researchers who have studied multiple cases over the years. In her book Blockbusters: Hit-Making, Risk-Taking and the Big Business of Entertainment Harvard Business School Professor Anita Elberse emphasizes this. Professor Elberse references the phenomenon as the “talent life cycle” which reflects how a talent’s brand value changes over time. That value can be reflected as the sales of a musician’s recordings to the sales of a professional athlete’s jersey. 

Depending on where the talent is in their talent life cycle, it’ll impact certain career decisions such as whether they’ll opt to create value or capture value, as Professor Elberse puts it. Simply put–creating value is the WNBA All-Star who cements her legacy and elevates her brand after winning her second championship and snagging the coveted Finals MVP award–then going on to win a gold medal at the Olympics the following summer (further elevating her brand with those wins). The WNBA All-Star then captures value on her legacy cementation and brand equity when it comes time to release her signature sneakers or negotiate a contract extension with her team, for example. (It’s giving A’ja Wilson, isn’t it?)

Like Professor Elberse, I’ve seen the talent life cycle dynamics play out in various ways–within the walls of one of Hollywood’s most valuable sports and entertainment talent agencies to both the value creation and value capture activities within a private athlete-owned enterprise.  As Blockbusters, too, points out….”value capture is where long-term success lies.” 

In the Issa Rae and Steph Curry examples–both sets of talent leverage their personas to both create and capture value within their brand platform ecosystems (Hoorae//UNDERRATED). 

Value capture has the strongest impact within Platform ecosystems. This is why I believe Platform will become the next wave for both talent and the brands who wish to partner.

What’s the Wave About Platform?

There is power in Platform. In fact, I’m bullish on Platform

It expands market impact and diversifies revenue generation, all with the Talent’s ownership and control and with bountiful benefits for the brands & properties that partner. Because of that alone, it provides the possibility to expand the relevancy arc in a Talent’s life cycle.

While an endorsement may run out at the end of term between a Talent and a Brand Partner–Platform creates the opportunity to extend the brand relations and the opportunity to uniquely impact a direct audience.

We’re seeing top names such as superstar athletes Lebron James, Tiger Woods (TGL), actresses Issa Rae & Reese WitherSpoon, and Youtube Influencer Mr. Beast leverage Platform: leveraging their personas to conceptualize and monetize their passions through ecosystem endeavors, while both creating and capturing value as they benefit from opportunities that come Top Down (think NIKE x Kevin Durant) while hyper-emphasizing on going Bottom Up (think Boardroom Media x Kevin Durant). (more to come on Top Down v Bottom Up in a future edition). 

Depending on where one is on their talent life cycle–and where that persona plateau starts to hit, he/she’d want to be strategic on whether to leverage persona or build platform. A college athlete will take full advantage of leverage persona (getting NIL deals), while a pro athlete in his/her fifth season in the league may begin to build platform. And this, ladies and gentlemen, is why Champion Strategies(.co) exists.

So, question, tell me what you think about this…

Is developing and creating Platform Ecosystems a “trend” only viable for the top superstars? Is Platform only a success for the talent that have strong brands and long-standing positioning in their respective arenas? Is the latter tail of the talent life cycle the only point in time that Platform ecosystem should be developed?  These are great questions to ponder being that the names I’ve listed are top-tier talent who have top-of-the-arc sweat and brand equity. 

Meet me in the subsequent editions of Platforms & Personas for more insights and answers to the above questions. 

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Want to get started on strategic platform buildout? That’s my jam. But there’s layers to this, so get in touch with me to learn more.

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Champion Takes is the intellectual accessory of Champion Strategies(.co). Champion Strategies as a strategic advisory and consultancy provides dynamic strategies & bespoke services that help today’s most ambitious personalities, organizations and leaders in sports & entertainment unlock their full business and brand potential. For more info, contact [email protected].

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