Technology
Jacquelle Amankonah Horton, the Founder of Fave, on the Power of Fans and Community
Jacquelle Amankonah Horton shares her experience starting Fave, a platform that empowers fans and allows creators and artists to reward and connect directly with verified fans. Fave offers many opportunities for fans to create a community around their passion for artists, bands, creators, and more. Read on to learn about Fave’s many opportunities for fans and artists alike.
Before founding Fave, Jacquelle Amankonah Horton earned a degree in Entertainment Business from USC. Her professional experience includes over seven years of work at Google, five of which she spent at YouTube working to drive creator and fan engagement tools. Before that, she worked creating different mobile apps that connected fans with artists, her first taste creating fan-related products.
She shares, “During my time at YouTube, I would say that was where I realized that there were so many products that were created for creators for them to be able to communicate a message very clearly to their audience.”
However, Jacquelle realized that there were few options for fans to participate, react, or engage with each other. Fans were limited to comments, likes, or paying money to join fan clubs.
Many fans also post content online, such as music covers or fan art, but this sometimes gets taken down. The artist also misses out on a chance to make revenue from it.
“It just seems like all of this amazing fan activity was getting lost, and even in terms of the community, people were trying to meet each other at live events, but anytime they wanted to continue that conversation, it was like let’s go to Twitter. Let’s go to Instagram.”
However, some fans experienced judgment from coworkers, friends, and family for posting about their love of a particular artist, movie, or fandom online.
This is where the idea for Fave came in.
What is Fave?
Jacquelle describes Fave as “a platform that is serving to empower fans where we allow them to showcase all of the amazing activities that they’re doing as a fan. Everything from listening and viewing behavior to fan art and fan events… to a story they have standing in line for five hours for a meet and greet.”
She shares that Fave is a safe haven for fans because they no longer have to worry about others trying to scam or harass them for their passions.
Fans also earn status and badges for participating in everyday fan activities, like streaming, posting their ticket stubs, and posting online about the artist. These badges unlock special benefits for fans.
“Fans can then unlock a number of benefits. They can be recognized by the creator to say, “Hey, for all of my verified super fans, I want you to get early access to this video drop that I have, or I’m going to select the top 2% to come on the back of my tour bus and listen to unreleased music.”
Jacquelle notes that Fave wants fans to be recognized for their amazing work and passion.
“We have been working with a number of artists, partners, and brand partners to be able to allow them to activate their fan and make sure that they do, in fact, get recognized by providing them with an incredible experience.”
She adds that the response to Fave has been incredible.
“We’ve seen such incredible partnerships and bouts of support from fans who are writing these long posts, making these long videos, or genuinely sharing with their communities, like this is what we’ve been waiting for, a space just for us, where we can finally be seen and come together.”
Monetization Opportunities on Fave
Fave gives artists and creators a direct communication channel to their fans, unlike traditional social media, which may only show your post to a select percentage of your followers based on the current algorithm.
In addition to the community aspects, Fave offers many monetization opportunities for both fans and artists.
“You [The artist or creator] have a hundred percent access to all of them [your fans] at any time, but what’s even more powerful is that you can target who you want to message, you can send something or offer a reward or sell something just to your verified fans or your verified super fans.”
Jacquelle adds that artists can be particular about who they choose, even selecting within parameters of what country someone lives in, how long they have been a fan, fans who don’t own merchandise, etc.
The other monetization opportunity is Fave’s marketplace.
“We have a marketplace on the platform that allows fans to sell unique creations to other fans. These are things like a friendship bracelet with the fandom name on it, or a lamp, or a blanket… These things that are different from what the creator may be selling on their merch stores.”
Jacquelle shares that the artist gets a percentage cut of items sold in the marketplace within their fandom, creating a highly lucrative source of passive income for them.
Working with Brands
Another benefit of Fave is its ability to broker brand deals for artists.
“Let’s say there’s an activation with a restaurant, right? And that restaurant is very authentically doing this incredible experience that your fans are loving. You can now approach that restaurant, or we can help you broker that deal to then have a much more meaningful, authentic [brand deal.]”
Artist Involvement
Jacquelle shares that one of the most amazing experiences on Fave has been with The BTS Army.
“We encourage fans to be able to throw their own events and meet with each other.”
Fans can earn badges for attending fan-held events, concerts, and even recreating photos that members of BTS have posted.
“As fans, they would say things like this is usually where my camera rolls would just eat all of my photos, and I don’t get to see them anymore… But here I can put them [up] in a monumental way where you can see them and document them and relive them.”
An example of an artist involved in fan engagement through Fave includes Bruno Mars giving super fans access to a listening party. Jacquelle shares that the artist’s family or friends typically attend these parties, but this gave fans a chance to tear up the dance floor and hype up the new music.
Another example is fans who could not attend the Billboards Awards and who were able to write letters to their favorite artists through Fave.
“The brand was able to see the kind of depth, how to call it the engagement, that they had around the Billboard Awards that now has cemented in their heart because they were able to transcribe a letter about meaningful that artist is to them.”
Closing Thoughts
Jacquelle shares that Fave has many exclusive projects and partnerships in the works that they can’t share about just yet.
However, she says that Fave is working on addressing a significant problem among fans: access to concert tickets.
“We are very much looking forward to having Fave be a place where fans will be able to verify themselves on Fave and then be able to get access to concert tickets first, before anybody else. I think this [will] help get rid of the fact that bots and scalpers are getting like 70% of tickets, which is insane.”
