Hollywood marketing is often viewed through the lens of big budgets, flashy red carpets, and expensive advertising. But any show business marketer will tell you that the ground game is just as important when selling a movie or series.
This premise is critical to the business model of SGG Media, a start-up agency that represents a number of social media accounts catering to sectors such as sports and lifestyle. Founded by 28-year-old Troy Paul, SGG occupies a quiet but increasingly powerful space in entertainment marketing. In this space, we amplify content across a network of approximately 3,000 “micro-influencers,” with a total reach of an estimated 270 million viewers. More than half of those accounts are obsessed with sports, with pages following leagues, geographic markets, and niche fandoms. Their philosophy is simple. Sports culture is pop culture.
Over the past three years, a number of major studios have agreed and joined SGG as clients with titles such as The Odyssey, Scary Movie and Anaconda (Amazon MGM, A24, Universal, Paramount, Lionsgate, Sony Pictures). A bench of premium advisors doesn’t hurt either. Former Imagine Entertainment co-chairman Michael Rosenberg joined SGG’s board last October, along with audience guru Kevin Getz and “Little Miss Sunshine” producer Dived Friendly.
Paul conceived SGG Media as a senior at Notre Dame High School in Sherman Oaks, California, and believes social media marketing is undergoing a paradigm shift.
“We’re moving from highly produced user-generated content to an amplification model. A few years ago, major studios would create a commercial with a celebrity, post it on Instagram, and hope it went viral on its own. Or they would spend money on meta or X ads to promote it,” Paul said. “Agencies like SGG can now amplify spots in real-time to the accounts of prestigious influencers with authentic fan followings.”
SGG’s approach falls under the hot-button problem of “clipping” that is so prevalent in the music industry. In this issue, only the most attention-grabbing parts of the content are promoted to get widespread attention. Paul said the days of spending big bucks on paid media are behind the times, and his micro-influencers (many of whom don’t appear on camera or promote themselves as the focal point of their accounts) can win by directing what’s relevant to their followers and sharing it as a hive.
Goetz told Variety that these tactics are “financially smart” for studios and go a long way toward winning the trust of Gen Z and the emerging Alpha generation (whose methods are driving box office revenue, as evidenced by numerous research reports and exit data in recent years).
“Authenticity is very important to young people in what they watch, read and interact with. It has to come from a trusted source, and sponsored ads, no matter how you slice it, don’t fit into that category,” said Goetz, founder and CEO of entertainment research firm Screen Engine. “Gen Z and the upcoming Generation Alpha are cynical. They’ve grown up in a world of extreme polarization, with divided countries and little trust in government and corporations. They realize they’ve been sold everything.”
As the agency continues to expand, Paul is currently seeking content veterans from legacy media to solidify SGG’s position in the new ecosystem of social marketing. In many sports, we are taught that once you have the ball, you can keep running.
