The acquisition of Jovem Nerd by retail behemoth Magazine Luiza (or Magalu) was the big news of the week on the Brazilian internet and brought up a question: what does a retail company want with a pop-culture website? The answer is linked to the growing importance that content itself, whatever it may be, has gained in the strategy of giant retail businesses such as Amazon and, now, Magalu.
Let’s see. Before buying Jovem Nerd, Magalu acquired two other great content sites: Steal the Look and Canaltech, references in fashion and technology. Now, with Jovem Nerd, the company dives deep into the content world by bringing relevant pop-culture content creators for at least two decades to its team.
Amazon, in turn, besides producing its own content on Prime Vídeo and other platforms, has incorporated Twitch in 2014, and years later bought one of the largest newspapers in the U.S., the Washington Post.
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Apart from the obvious size difference between the Brazilian and the American platforms, a simple concept unites both: the intention to be close not only to those who create content but also to the environment where the magic happens.
This strategy goes far beyond buying the audience. It is much closer to assuming the narrative and creative power of these businesses to expand the final sale of its own products and, at the same time, encourage the growth of the newly acquired ones so that other audiences come to the parent company’s ecosystem.
A few years ago, the digital media model boosted; in recent times the influencers market has replaced this front. Everyone has thousands, millions of followers. Everyone is a content creator. (Really?) Audiences and other digital metrics are commodities made possible by money in ads and the purchase of audiences promoted by social media.
So, why not build your own content models – and why not buy them, if possible?
But, more than ever, what sets one content creator apart from the other is, invariably, the authenticity and understanding of the various distribution platforms.
And what is the meeting of a retail giant with a successful content creator if not the materialization of that differential?
