As social media and digital connectivity continue to shape consumer behavior, especially among younger generations, brands are increasingly focusing on how to leverage fandoms and community to connect with young shoppers.
One company that does this incredibly well is Webtoon Entertainment, parent company of the user-generated storytelling platforms Wattpad (for web novels) and Webtoon (for web comics). Combined, the two sites have more than 170 million monthly active users, primarily Gen Z females. With 24 million creators contributing content and more than 55 million stories created, to say that these platforms have an engaged audience is an understatement. Not to mention that the stories fans create on the sites have gone on to reach mainstream audiences through publishing and streaming deals for popular titles like Through My Window (Netflix), Boot Camp (Prime Video) and Life’s a Witch (Simon & Schuster).
“There’s this fandom expert I follow called Zoe Scaman, and she talks a lot about “the fandom formula” — it’s community meets autonomy meets equity,” said Alessandra Ferreri, VP of Content at Wattpad Webtoon Studios during a session at Advertising Week New York (AWNY). “We build community with deep connections around our content, and because we’re a user-generated platform we also have autonomy built in: You can choose what to read, you can choose what to write, you can choose which creators to support. And then there’s also a level of equity built in because our creators are able to earn money from their work, and our readers are able to choose which creators to support, so there’s a sense of ownership as well.”
At AWNY, Webtoon executives shared tips for brands looking to create meaningful connections with young, passionate consumers. Here are the top takeaways:
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1. Speak Gen Z’s Language
“For Gen Z, social media is part of their reality — it’s who they are as people, so social listening is crucial for us to maintain an authentic connection with them online,” said Megan Weales, Social Media Manager for Wattpad. “Gen Z has their own language. I could build an encyclopedia of their memes, their inside jokes, and it’s really difficult to navigate that if you’re not deeply embedded in that culture. So while we know how our users interact and engage with our brands on our platforms, we also have social listening to know how they’re talking about our brands on social too, so that we get on their level.”
But Chris Mathieu, Director of Brand Partnerships for Wattpad Webtoon Ad Solutions, cautioned brands to tread lightly when attempting to enter these communities.
“If you can come in organically and authentically speak to them, that’s where you’re really going to make them fans of you and of your brand messaging,” he said. “Brands tell stories, stories about products and services, so it starts with storytelling. But you have to talk with these communities as opposed to at them. It’s when we start throwing things at the wall to see what sticks, or kind of yelling at Gen Z that they totally tune you out. They’re super savvy when it comes to messaging in that way.”
The way that Wattpad and Webtoon do this is by becoming one of them, said Weales: “Our voices on social for both Wattpad and Webtoon is to be a super fan; we want to nerd out with them,” she said. “So for Wattpad that means showing up in spaces like #BookTok and Bookstagram where we know we can find our users and other users like them. And when we’re showing up in those spaces, we’re using Gen Z’s language. I’m constantly writing down sentences that I know Gen Z is using. I’ve got one in my back pocket — ‘Who is this diva?’ — that I just can’t wait to use.”
(I’ll bet I’m not the only one hoping that Weales will actually publish that encyclopedia to help us older folks out with all that Gen Z lingo.)
2. Become a ‘Fan-thropologist’ to Inform Your Strategy
Social listening is clearly important to understanding fans and their communities, but there is another equally important element to success, according to Ferreri — data. Both Wattpad and Webtoon have content and creator management teams dedicated to discovering, tracking and analyzing these communities’ activity.
“We all have to become ‘fan-thropologists,’ using our data and analytics to figure out the science and the psychology behind not just what they’re looking at and what they’re interested in, but why they’re interested in it,” she said. “On the studio side in particular, when we’re looking at film, TV, animation, graphic novels, traditional publishing, we want to be able to match what’s happening on the platform with the market to see what the [broader] market is asking for.”
3. Lean on Creators
It’s no surprise that creators are a huge part of user-generated platforms like Wattpad and Webtoon, but as Mathieu pointed out, they also are an incredible tool that brands can use to connect with these communities, and the same is true on other social platforms.
“Connecting with Gen Z in an authentic way starts with our creators,” he said. “These creators are the conduit to their fans and their fandoms.”
(Editor’s note: Advertising Week and Retail TouchPoints are both subsidiaries of EmeraldX.)
