“We’re the first generation to have grown up with a mobile phone as basically our remote control to the world,” says Timothy Armoo, founder and CEO of social media marketing agency Fanbytes, which is leading the charge when it comes to connecting Generation-Z with brands worldwide. “Because of that, the way that we engage and interact with content is fundamentally different.”
Armoo understands this difference, and that’s how he’s been able to develop the start-up he co-founded in 2017, while still at university studying computer science, into a major media industry player. He now has a staff of 60, and major partnerships with everyone from famous sportswear and clothing brands to the UK Government, for whom Fanbytes has been working to find ways to engage Gen-Zedders in the battle against Covid-19.
“As someone who was part of the Gen-Z world, I realised that social media was going to be the frontier that brands needed to cross to reach that audience,” says Armoo of setting up Fanbytes. “But they’d need someone to help them do that, and as a Gen-Zedder and someone who understood the impact of social media, I brought those two worlds together.”
The mobile marketing guru connecting brands with the Gen-Zed audience
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Tech guru Timothy Armoo set up his social media start-up while still at university – and four years on has a team of sixty. Here he shares how a creative approach and staying close to the Gen-Z zeitgeist has been key to his success
Gone is the old-school branding model of spray-and-pray campaigns (think irritating junk mail) in favour of a more granular, deeper focus on audiences, with less of a focus on reaching big numbers than engaging with myriad smaller communities.
“There are communities everywhere,” says Armoo, “and because there are so many communities you can really pinpoint and target people down to the core. That’s profound, because most people before Gen-Z could not do that at all.”
Community is key when it comes to Armoo’s terms of engagement. Indeed, Fanbyte’s success is built on the insight that “There is a community for every single person, and however niche you think about an audience, there is a niche inside of that niche”.
The company has grown rapidly by probing, exploring and opening up that nest of niches, especially through the pandemic, with both the UK Government and Public Health England turning to Armoo and Fanbytes to get crucial Covid-19 messaging across to the Gen-Z inhabitants of social platforms like TikTok.
Are these digital natives, the first humans to go into the world phone-first, also the first inhabitants of what we are now calling the metaverse? “It’s obviously the buzzword du jour,” says Armoo of the metaverse concept, “but I don’t think it’s going to displace social media. That’s not going to happen. But we are already, to some degree, living in the metaverse,” he adds, “because our digital identities are more powerful now than our physical identities.”
TIMOTHY ARMOO
FANBYTES
He credits his study of computer science as an early inspiration. “Not so much in the programming,” he says, “but in bringing big different concepts together. To be able to understand how this links with that.”
That sense of curiosity and enquiry proved crucial when claiming the invaluable middle ground between big brands and the brand-new generational ethics of Gen-Z. Because, as Armoo says, “The way that we engage and interact with content is fundamentally different.”
BRINGING TWO WORLDS TOGETHER
CHANGING NEGATIVE PERCEPTIONS
It’s that power of insight and a restless curiosity as to how to connect very different worlds that has helped Armoo make Fanbytes one of the world’s leading influencer agencies. And he credits his time as a Rising Star on the Founders Forum initiative supported by Samsung as a big influence and a driver.
“I got in there and did a pitch about where I see the future of social,” he recalls. “I found it really cool, and the reason I found it cool is that when you’re within a group of people who are constantly thinking from a strategic level about how they move their particular industry, you find it’s far easier to connect the dots between the two. That was the main thing I got from it. You have a group of people who are passionate about driving their industry forward. They’re passionate about this stuff, and they’re able to connect the dots.”
As a Rising Star on the Founders Forum initiative supported by Samsung, Timothy was able to share his ideas on the future of social media with other key innovators and benefit from their own insights and energy. "You have a group of people who are passionate about driving their industry forward, and they’re able to connect the dots.” .
Timothy set up his social media influencer agency start-up while he was still at university studying computer science. He credits the subject with helping him bring different concepts together, such as Gen-Z media stars with the brands marketing to that demographic
Hafsa's second career as a novelist came about through her love for Stormzy's music. “I really do like writing, and I loved Stormzy’s music and I was following him on social media. And because of
USING the power of insight
"We built Fanbytes to be the Gen Z agency for Gen Z brands. We know what Gen Z want from branded content, we know how they’re behaving on social, and we know how to reach them on their native platforms."
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The inventive design and intuitive tech of the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold3 has been created to help spark your curiosity, pairing innovation with imagination to revolutionise the way you work, rest and play.
To find out more, visit samsung.com
DISCOVER MORE
Produced by Independent Ignite
Project Manager: Tom Warner
Words: Laura Macbeth
Designer: Zimi Unzueta
Partner content
Produced by Independent Ignite
Project Manager: Tom Warner
Words: Laura Macbeth
Designer: Zimi Unzueta
Partner content
The inventive design and intuitive tech of the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold3 has been created to help spark your curiosity, pairing innovation with imagination to revolutionise the way you work, rest and play.
To find out more, visit samsung.com
DISCOVER MORE