EXCLUSIVE: Warner Music Australia & Born Bred Talent announce new global influencer partnership

Tomorrow at VidCon in Melbourne, Warner Music Australia and major influencer management, digital and PR agency Born Bred Talent are announcing a new groundbreaking partnership which will see the setting up of a new video distribution network, Born Bred Distribution.

YouTubers around the world will have access to it – and with it, give some of Warner’s 29-strong local roster the chance to partner with, and be promoted by, major influencers whose followings can top up to eight million.

Making the September 1 VidCon presentation at 11.30am are Born Bred founder Clare Winterbourn and chairman Victor Gugger, and Simon Cahill, head of digital and business development of Warner Music Australia.

By accessing the Warner Music YouTube Multi-Channel Network (MCN) Born Bred’s influencers sit side by side with Warner artists.

The outcome will be to monetise creators’ content, and to find other mutually beneficial outcomes.

“This is the heart of the partnership,” Cahill tells TMN. “We’re trying to explore the audiences that musicians and influencers share.  

“We want to find out what works with different audiences, and finds ways where we can collaborate and work with those audiences together to build fans for both the artists and the YouTubers.”

The new network will provide audience development and content programming strategy, collaborations, digital rights management, content ID and back-end work.

Explains Cahill, “YouTube is its own world. And you have to know the way to make YouTube work for you.

“Born Bred will provide a lot of it by service around content – how to create content, how to create the right kind of content, and how to get the most views.”

Clare Winterbourn says, “This partnership will change how we work with our YouTubers, allowing them to profit immensely from their brilliant content, while giving them access to some of the biggest musicians around the globe and from here in Australia.

“We are thrilled to be part of this global partnership.”

Left to right: Simon Cahill, Victor Gugger and Clare Winterbourn

As well as advising Warner artists on how to improve their YouTube content, the new partnership also sees Born Bred become Warner’s preferred influencer marketing agency, managing campaigns for artists, tours and domestic signings.

The relationship between the two companies began when Cahill approached Winterbourn about Warner discovery Miriam Star, an actress and model from Sydney.

At the time she was 11 and had 1.5 million Instagram followers.

Winterbourn provided advice to Star and her management on building her profile, Now 13, she has 2.5 million Instagram followers.

Influencers have become a growing component of Warner Music’s marketing mix.

“It’s an amazing way to get music artists to an audience,” Cahill says, “But it’s got to be authentic, first and foremost.  

“There has to be a natural fit between the influencer and the artist.  It’s about finding the right audience. “

Local acts are in line, but the next use of influencers will be when David Guetta launches his new album on September 14 in Ibiza.

An influencer will catch up with the superstar DJ in the club for a chat, and will broadcast all the information back to fans.

Cahill is enthusiastic by the creative potential of digital marketing.

“We’re moving into a world which is not necessarily a ‘buy now, consume now’ world but ‘I’ll consume when I want to’.

“It really means the dialogue and the way we work with people is that we have to respond to the way they consume music, the time of day, in their own tone in a very personalised way.

“So digital marketing is the first kind of marketing which has allowed you to become personalised by the way you talk to people about when exactly they want to listen to music, and how they want to engage.

“It’s up to us to embrace that and learn how to speak that language.”