Cameo wants Australia to play starring role on its talent platform

The US tech unicorn wants less Snoop Dogg and more local celebrities as it ramps up a local expansion on its talent platform.

Australian and US celebrities are taking to Cameo.

US tech unicorn Cameo is ramping up investment in Australia, hiring a former Airbnb executive to spearhead its local expansion as it looks to sign up local celebrities and stave off new upstart rivals.

Cameo, which has a local office in Sydney, has more than 40,000 celebrities on its platform and CEO Steven Galanis said the company now wants to significantly expand on its current roster of 1000 Australian celebs. The platform connects them with fans via customised video messages, live video calls and direct messages.

Australian celebrities including tennis star Nick Kyrgios, Olympic swimmer Kyle Chalmers and footy legend Billy Brownless are currently on the platform and Australia ranks as Cameo’s third-largest international market, growing at a rate of 500 per cent year-on-year in 2020.

The company is now a tech ‘unicorn’, and is valued at just over $US1bn having raised funds from PayPal, SoftBank Vision Fund 2, skateboard legend Tony Hawk and Amazon’s Alexa Fund.

“Cameo started with the idea that the selfie is the new autograph,” Mr Galanis said in an interview. “When we were kids and you ran into someone famous, you pulled out your Sharpie, you got them to sign into the menu at the restaurant. And now people want a selfie, they want something personalised and something authentic.”

Cameo CEO Steven Galanis.

The executive said that Cameo’s local operations began as just one person, but is now a fully-fledged team including former Airbnb country manager Sam McDonagh, who will serve as Cameo’s general manager for APAC.

“We’re extremely excited to be involved with building and growing Cameo in Australia. We want to fuel the fan experience here, develop new products and features and bring our Aussie talent onto the platform,” Mr McDonagh said.

Covid has forced widespread closures across the entertainment and sports industries and Cameo is one platform helping creative professionals maintain some kind of income.

“I talk to so many of our talent who say Cameo has been an absolute godsend for them, and it’s not just the money side,” Mr Galanis said. “The psychological loneliness that comes if you’re a creative professional, you’re used to taking care of your fans and connecting with them and we’ve been able to help a lot with the psychological side over the past couple of years.”

New rivals are launching in Australia taking on Cameo, including Swysh, founded by former Afterpay executive Michael Roth. Swysh works purely with athletes, and donates at least 20 per cent of the proceeds from every video to two local children’s charities – Starlight Children’s Foundation and Variety, the Children’s Charity. In the last 12 months, Swysh has donated over $250,000.

Another service, Memmo.me, launched in Australia this month. Memmo.me Australia general manager Greg Mitchinson said that he’s confident of taking on Cameo locally and wooing support from both celebs and fans.

“We believe that there’s no room for a one-size-fits-all approach in this industry, and so we have paved our way as the experts of localisation,” he said. “With every new territory launch, we employ a local, on-the-ground team of experts, who can use their market expertise, cultural knowledge and business acumen to provide a level of service to our customers that only localisation can make possible. Our launch in Australia has gone incredibly well so far.”

Mr Galanis said that according to his statistics, Cameo produces more videos every week than any of its rivals have ever done combined.

Olympic swimmer Kyle Chalmers charging $30 for video calls on Cameo.

“At the end of the day, only we can offer a true global footprint. Even when local copycats come along, Greek musicians for example want to sell Cameos to people in Greece, as well as Melbourne, and immigrants in Chicago, and the diaspora all over the place is something that we uniquely offer.

“If Cameo is successful, at scale, we will build technology that enables every single talent to have a personal relationship with each and every one of their fans. I think of the 100 biggest brands on earth, many of them will be people. And talent will be able to monetise that.”

Mr Galanis said that contrary to what one might assume, Cameo’s most-requested celebrities are some of the least expensive.

“Every single talent on Earth is now their own channel, and their own radio station, so you have millions of people all competing for eyeballs and the big monolithic ageless talent of the past, the Brad Pitts and the Jennifer Anistons, those are not the people that are most requested on Cameo,” he said.

“The most popular talent on our platform are the ones with super passionate niche followings. And that’s a really big difference and I think the implications of that are going to be pretty tremendous.”