Culture Genesis: The Digital Studio Focused on Remixing Technology for Multicultural Audiences
Powering Interactive Mobile Experiences With Live Video
With a lack of entertainment technology targeting multicultural audiences, Cedric J. Rogers and Shaun Newsum cofounded Culture Genesis to diversify the digital landscape. They created the Trivia Mob mobile app, InteractLive production platform, and are teaming up with top media companies to create a variety of live productions with this goal in mind.
820 million+
connected video devices in the U.S.¹
7 hours
amount of time millennials spend watching video on their phone each day.¹
73
percentage of African Americans who identify as gamers, compared to 66 percent of the total population.²
Case Study Snapshot
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Remixing Digital Technology for Underserved Audiences
Multicultural audiences continue to influence society and the economy. Despite this, their impact isn’t reflected by the technology being built today. The cofounders of Culture Genesis sought to address this discrepancy by creating platforms and content focused on these viewers.
The statistics speak for themselves. While 73 percent of African Americans and 72 percent of US Hispanics aged 13 and older identify as gamers, only 66 percent of the total population does. What’s more, African Americans are more likely to use social media, video streaming, and music streaming than any other demographic group.²
Culture Genesis started out by creating Trivia Mob. The mobile app brings live gaming to mobile phones while streaming popular entertainers like actor Melvin Gregg and influencer Brittany Lucio. Two hosts participate in a head-to-head battle while viewers pick a side.
In their own words, Rogers and Newsum describe the platform as a “dope live gameshow.”
But fusing the worlds of tech and entertainment doesn’t stop there. The Culture Genesis team continues to bridge the gap with a range of interactive media platforms. Video streaming allows Culture Genesis to interact with users via a highly engaging format — thereby cultivating brand affinity.
Enabling Interactive Live Experiences
With InteractLive, the production platform that Culture Genesis used to create TriviaMob, Rogers and Newsum work with a range of clients to build mobile streaming experiences for their customers. They’ve teamed up with All Def Digital and Universal Music Group to develop Bar Exam, a live music quiz app, and will be producing their first show in August at Kevin Hart’s HartBeat Productions studio.
Loaded with tools for developers, Wowza’s products were the perfect fit. The Culture Genesis team helps production studios add real-time interactive content to their workflow using Wowza Video and Wowza’s powerful developer resources for both iOS and Android.
“We focus primarily on helping OTT platforms provide interactive experiences around their existing content to add a new, fun, and engaging layer to apps,” explained Rogers. “Right now, there are no other turnkey enterprise-level solutions to enable real-time interactive content. As part of that solution, a low-latency content delivery network is a must-have — which is why we came to Wowza.”
From Universal Music Group to burgeoning production studios, entertainment companies are partnering with Culture Genesis to reach viewers wherever they’re accessing content — be it on mobile devices, tablets, or TVs.
Building a Reliable Platform for Whatever Comes Next
Culture Genesis is just getting started. Since proving their ability to deliver engaging experiences and commitment to reaching content-hungry audiences, they continue to transform the entertainment industry with tech-enabled solutions.
“Working closely with the Wowza staff has enabled us to discover new use cases and customer segments for InteractLive,” said Rogers. “Our goal always centered around enabling the next generation of live interactive experiences. Wowza’s streaming capabilities are a key piece in creating a tech infrastructure to achieve just that.”
The Culture Genesis team will be experimenting with several exciting new productions this year at HartBeat Studios, while staying true to the interactive live format. These include talk shows, unscripted variety shows, sporting events, and live commerce.
Passive media consumption may very well be a thing of the past. And Culture Genesis is leading this revolution by teaming up with Wowza to make it happen.
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1. Source: Zype
2. Source: Nielsen