Reid Jones is no movie star, but he still got his own time on the red carpet. He recently rubbed elbows with the stars at the Los Angeles premiere of Marvel’s Avengers: Age of Ultron. The 16-year-old aspiring entertainment journalist from Kennesaw, Georgia, was invited to conduct red-carpet interviews with the Avengers cast.
Jones loves Marvel superhero movies. He blogs about them regularly. He’s a super fan. But even more interesting to marketers, Jones’s blog posts attract readers. Lots of them. His blog has been read nearly 11 million times. That puts him in the category of “influencer.” Teen influencers have an on-line audience that’s hard to reach by traditional methods like TV commercials.
“When you’re reaching young people, you have to go where the authorities on culture exist,” says Angela Courtin. She’s chief marketing officer for Relatively Media, a company that makes movies. She says kids don’t read major newspapers to get their reviews. “They’re now on YouTube and SnapChat and Instagram and Vine.”
Many super fans write blogs for sites like Moviepilot. Some, like Jones, draw a large following of young audience members—exactly the group marketers hope to reach. Moviepilot says Jones and others like him are the reason for the site’s success. Since last year when the site began allowing readers to blog their own reviews, hits have doubled. In March, Moviepilot had over 17 million views.
Jones writes an average of more than one post a day on Moviepilot. He recently looked for clues in the Age of Ultron trailer and correctly deduced a couple of plot points.
“People like Reid knew more about specifics than some of the editors did,” says Tobi Baukhage, the website’s founder. “We realized we needed to empower these kids to become [content] creators.”
Contributors are rewarded for their efforts with seats at early movie screenings, action figures, dolls, and mugs. The most popular, like Jones, get paid contracts. He was making $1,000 per month as a freelancer before he stepped back to focus on his studies.
Jones is looking forward to working for Moviepilot again. His father says he’s proud that his son turned his love of Marvel movies into a job.
“They certainly paid him well with the trip and the experience,” says Bart Jones. “I think it’s great.”
Most teens don’t have millions of people reading what they say. But even if you’re not a super fan, that doesn’t mean you don’t have influence. What will you do with that responsibility?
