You may know Jace Norman best from Henry Danger, but what you may not know is that he is actually quite the businessman behind the scenes. Yep, that’s right. Jace just launched a company alongside his older brother Xander Norman and professional sports agent Mike Gruen, and it goes by the name of Creator Edge Media.
J-14 caught up with the star to get the inside scoop on what Creator Edge Media is all about, and it is safe to say he has a lot in store. Creator Edge Media is a marketing agency that enables social media influencers to deliver quality branded content, and Jace exclusively spilled how the idea for the company came about.
i’m so proud of @Jacenorman. he’s worked so hard for us and never stops. #CreatorEdgeMedia pic.twitter.com/S0KEHWhWeV
— @adoremynorman👻 (@adoremynorman) December 1, 2017
The Nickelodeon star exclusively told us, “Creator Edge Media, was sort of a brand for me and friends. I mean, it’s gonna grow past that, but right now, originally that’s what the goal was. I saw a lot of these influencers who post their ad and they don’t really have a good integration into the brand. It’s just holding up the product real quick or just like saying ‘Hey, buy this!’ real quick. Our goal is to seamlessly integrate these brands with the creators or the influencers – whatever you wanna call them – in a way that doesn’t hurt the eye of the people who follow them in the first place.”
Jace got the idea simply by the way he consumes social content and recognizing the fact that brands’ advertising could be done in a more natural way – a way that is more inviting to the audience.
“I kind of saw where [social media] was going in general. In a few years, that’s where we’re headed in general, and I knew a lot of people being in that space for a few years now. So, I just teamed up with my friend, Michael, and my brother and we just decided to basically get it started. We’ve been working on it for a while now and we finally launched,” he continued.
What’s also cool about the company is that some of the creators he is working with are fellow members of the Nickelodeon fam (Sean Ryan Fox, Casey Simpson and Thomas Kuc – to name a few). Aside from assisting his peers in growing their brands, he will also be mentoring newcomers like Chase Liefeld – who, by the way, is basically Jace’s twin.
“Obviously, the whole thing about Nickelodeon [and Disney Channel] is for a lot people like Selena Gomez, I mean you go down the list, Ariana Grande and stuff, it’s really a great experience. You get to learn a lot as kids and then, eventually, you want to lodge off into another thing. I’m not necessarily saying that I want to push them into singing or whatever, I’m just trying to help them let go. Like me, I want to do this kind of company and that’s where I’m going right now or whatever. I’m just helping them take what they have, take what they’ve learned, take their followings that they have, and go wherever they want to,” Jace told J-14. “I’m totally here to mentor them and help them get through it on a personal level, not just a business level.”
Part of the job for Jace will be finding talent to work with, and his acting experience has helped him learn what to look for when seeking out creators to join Creator Edge Media.
“For me, I like to look at what they’re like off-camera. A lot of these people you’ll see that they look pretty on cameras, but behind the scenes, there’s not as entertaining, I guess, or charismatic. You can really tell some of these guys who’ve really made it big, people that I’ve met, you can tell that behind the scenes, they’re just as capable and just as fun and just as charismatic and just as smart. It’s really about what goes on behind the scenes for me. And, obviously, there’s some very talented people that you can just tell they’ve got it. Then, you go from there,” he said.
It goes a bit further than that though. Jace explained that what he looks for in an actor is not necessarily what he looks for in a social media personality. There are separate skills that you need for each, which he needs to be able to identify going forward in Creator Edge Media.
“I actually think they’re very different. For social media, specifically, you have to have very good taste. You have to know where things are going. Being very tapped in is what makes a lot of these people successful. Knowing what’s trendy, knowing what’s popping at the time and going after that, or even creating something that goes viral. It’s a very taste intuitive thing that makes these people very relevant. As far as acting goes, acting’s a whole different ball game. These influencers, you wanna call them, they’re brand new. So, it’s kind of exciting. This is a new frontier almost in entertainment and acting has been going on for thousands of years,” Jace explained.
We can’t wait to see where this new career move takes him!
Watch: Jace Norman Spills Behind-the-Scenes Secrets from Henry Danger
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