A scene from Bumbershoot music festival at Seattle Center.
AEG Global Partnerships has formed a new division called AEG Studios that will create, produce and develop original content for the company as a whole as well as its numerous brand partners. Veteran content strategist Raymond Leon Roker will oversee the new initiative as head of the division across music, sports and facilities.
"AEG Studios is a full-service, in-house production department,” said Andrew Klein, senior vice president, AEG Global Partnerships. “It’s basically a content house that will create projects for whatever our brand partner’s desire is. We will shoot long-and-short-form video content, still content, documentaries, photography, Virtual Reality (VR) and 360.”
Klein said the impetus for opening the new division was that content creation is now a standard part of AEG partners’ sponsorship needs. “It’s all about unique content that our partners can use on their social channels,” he explained. “They want experiential, they want signage, and they want access to talent that they can use to amplify the content itself.”
In many cases, prior to AEG Studios creation, the content was either being farmed out by AEG or their partners would use other entities to capture the content. With the studio formalized, AEG can now bring all this under their umbrella.
The physical AEG Studios is a space in Los Angeles that’s currently the home of AXS TV, which will stay in the location. Most of the production work, however, will be shot on location.
“If a client wants us to shoot at the Hangout Music Festival in Alabama, we’ll be on the beach in Alabama,” said Klein. “If content needs to be shot in Staples Center (Los Angeles), we’ll shoot there.”
Roker, who founded and ran Urb magazine for 19 years, founded marketing agency Rebel Organizations and moved on to Red Bull Media House before landing at Goldenvoice/AEG Presents four years ago, said his number one goal is to “answer the real and evolving needs of our partners around content. Everything about a brand’s marketing is their story, and we want to be in that conversation with them.”
“We want to leverage the opportunities these events create, and we want to engage our fans with stories,” he said. “Our first order of business is understanding the state-of-play with content in and around our events.”
Roker said he’s personally very excited about creative partnerships between brands, artists, storytellers and social media creators, and another goal is to expand AEG’s playing field in terms of collaborators.
“Video is the latest incarnation of storytelling as it pertains to brands,” Roker explained. “I’ve spent my entire career looking for ways to tell stories and produce content that’s engaging and relevant and bring facilitators along for the ride.”
Klein believes the creation of AEG Studios will “streamline the process for our partners and create cost efficiencies.” Clients are still free to use any production company they choose.
Klein used Renaissance Hotels as an example of how AEG Studios will operate. “We shot both short-form and long-form video footage in their various hotels and surrounding areas with musicians,” he said. He pointed to projects in and around AEG music festivals Firefly (Delaware), Panorama (New York City), and Bumbershoot as potential AEG Studios clients.
Klein thinks that the fact that AEG Studios is full-service and has the capabilities to shoot in VR and 360 will distinguish the new division from competitors. “We have VR cameras and are ready for the numerous brands that are looking for VR capability,” he said.
Klein said that in the first year AEG Studios will concentrate on working with existing partners and expanding relationships where appropriate. "In the future, we will evaluate with partners on an ad hoc basis," he said. "We want to create content that makes sense for us and the partner, content that is imaginative and creative. What we want to stay away from is creating content just for the sake of creating content.
“We’re going to provide solutions from concept to execution to amplification,” he said. “Our content will allow brands to engage their target audience authentically and tell their stories in more thoughtful and engaging ways. There remains a demand for content that is fresh, targeted and shareable.”
“This the culmination of all the work I’ve done in music and sports, and you couldn’t ask for a better playing field for creating content than under the AEG Studio banner,” added Roker. “It’s a very exciting time to fuse all that.”