How Revolt is changing its business model, and what it means for its upfront strategy

Black-owned media company Revolt is restructuring under a new parent company model, in part to better address marketers’ needs and expand its capabilities as economic volatility shifts brand priorities. The parent company, Offscript Worldwide, will connect brands to a growing stable of media verticals centered around three pillars: content, creators and commerce. ”I have to transform the way that brands see us,” said Detavio Samuels, CEO of Revolt and Offscript Worldwide. Revolt, like other TV media companies, has made efforts in recent years to distance itself from the perception of being solely a cable TV programmer. “We need to force [marketers] to see us as we are, not as they imagine us to be … or as we even were. There’s a lot of brands that think we’re just Revolt—no, we’re a collection of brands.” Some of those changes include the perception that although “we were so loud about being Black-owned—which is a source of pride—that our audience is only Black,” said Samuels. Offscript is also all-in on the creator economy as “creator media is more relevant than traditional media,” said Samuels. While Offscript is comprised of new and legacy Revolt brands, Offscript is what Samuels describes as a way of formalizing the experiments in cross-media programming with devoted offerings for marketers. The new parent organization will house Revolt and its sibling groups: Revolt Sports, in-house creative agency Six Zeroes and Gen Z-oriented digital publication Rap-Up. Offscript will also be the home of 440 Artists, a division devoted to music and artist development that was formally launched at SXSW in March, and Rebel House, a newly formalized offering that supports creators in the building and expansion of their content. 440 Artists and Rebel House were created in-house, but Samuels said Offscript will also look to acquire new brands, teasing a soon-to-be-announced acquisition that would give the company a stake in the gaming world. Samuels said additional acquisitions would similarly seek to dive further into “subcultures.” Acquisitions are partially why the Revolt name didn’t transfer to the parent company. Although the TV network group remains Offscript’s flagship brand, establishing a parent company allows new acquisitions to retain their identity while being absorbed into the Offscript stable, said Samuels. And, although Samuels denied its relevance to the news, the Revolt name may still be associated by some with Sean Combs, the network group’s founder who will stand trial next month on criminal charges related to rape and sexual assault, which Combs has denied. Last summer, Combs sold his majority stake in Revolt. Samuels said the largest shareholders in the company are its employees. While that employee ownership stake may shift pending any capital raising for future acquisitions, Samuels said that “a key piece of what gets me up every day is creating wealth for the employee base in this company, many of whom come from marginalized groups and wouldn’t get that opportunity.” The reorganization will allow Offscript to better partner with advertisers across its growing portfolio, a factor that has grown in importance as marketers seek to secure the best deals with media partners with whom they can spend larger volumes and appear across the most channels and content types possible. Read more: How upfront spending will change amid economic volatility Creators and influencers will serve as connective tissue for much of Offscript’s brand ecosystem. Rebel House is a creator network that partners with over 100 creators across podcasts, YouTube, TV and sports. The division will shift the focus from production partnerships to “partnering with them to build businesses … and take these creators into new expressions of their content," Samuels said. A major focus will be product integrations into creator content. While Revolt has long done so, Samuels said it hasn’t been easy to spread those types of integrations across channels; by merging Offscript’s brands under one umbrella, a brand can now follow a creator from podcast to social to video to TV. The company will also partner with creators to build their own products to distribute, or to mediate product partnerships with its creators to further drive revenue for brands. As this year’s upfront season approaches, during which advertisers commit large shares of spend to media partners for the coming year, Samuels said Revolt’s Offscript business transformation is meant to streamline the company’s offer to brands as they look to make spending with fewer companies stretch further. In addition to the new additions of sports and gaming content for sponsors, Revolt also opened access to inventory programmatically for the first time through LGBTQ+ media company Revry’s media exchange Prism Riot. “The [ad] market always goes like a roller coaster,” said Samuels. “We are entering into a season where performance marketing conversions are top priorities, and so we’re making sure that in our arsenal we have every weapon that a brand ever needs to be able to execute their strategy and plan.” Data-driven Marketing Playbook: Join industry leaders on May 22 to explore how data can drive marketing strategies, optimize media buying and improve customer engagement. Learn more here.

How Revolt is changing its business model, and what it means for its upfront strategy

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