KondZilla is a Brazilian music YouTube channel with nearly 66 million subscribers, “the largest FUNK channel in the WORLD!” and the right place to find out the top hits in the country’s “favelas” (slums). Konrad Dantas started KondZilla in 2012 to produce music video clips and now his YouTube channel has the potential to reach over 30 percent of the total Brazilian population. By comparison, leading Brazilian TV network Globo’s top show, the soap opera “A place in the sun,” has a 22.5 percent rating. TV ratings, needless to say, are not comparable to YouTube subscribers, which is why you should know more about KondZilla.
Today, Dantas turned KondZilla into a business group, including a film company with a Grammy Latino on its shelf, a record label, a news portal for favela youth, and a brand licensing company for consumer products like cellphone cases. Not every creator is as adept at running a business as Dantas, though. According to the (excellent) Atlantico Digital Influencer Survey of over five thousand Brazilian creators, 50 percent of Brazilians creating content make less than $100 per month and 23 percent of them get no income at all for their work. No wonder that while digital now makes up 61 percent of total ad spending worldwide, it only cracked 43 percent in Latin America, the smallest figure of any region, 11 points below the Middle East and Africa.
It’s not a supply problem. According to the Social Blade Database in Atlantico’s report, just in Brazil there are 2,275 YouTube channels with over one million subscribers. The top eight Brazilian YouTube channels add up to over 300 million subscribers. Brazil leads the world in the share of the population who purchased a product because a creator promoted it at 41 percent, while Mexico and Colombia managed to crack the top five with 29 and 20 percent, respectively. In 2020, Brazilian influencer platform Squid ran more than three thousand campaigns with 69 creators for brands such as Spotify and Unilever. They could use some help.
Sergio Sanches of Growth, a Brazilian PR agency, says influencer marketing is full of opportunities if you put in the work. He explains that creators will sell you access to their audience, but a bit like PR work, connecting with a creator’s audience requires a relationship beyond just money. Brands need to research their audiences to find what creators to invest in. It’s not an easy task and it can feel like everyone is trying to become a creator, even dogs. Sanches cites Google the Golden, whose 245 thousand Instagram followers could help you promote your pet-friendly services in Brazil. If you are targeting humans, he recommends virtual influencer Lu do Magalu, who at nearly 6 million followers could help you sell anything you want on Magalu’s digital shelves.
With Avaya, a Verb customer, we learned that virtual agents are not easy to get right, so it makes sense to treat them like influencers to pool resources in them. Yet, as we covered before, flesh and blood creators are still the most compelling communications trend we are tracking. We might not subscribe to KondZilla right away, but we’ll sure keep following Taylor Lorenz (now at the Washington Post) to continue learning about the creator economy. Join our newsletter to keep track!