On today’s episode of Variety podcast “Strictly Business,” Aleen Dreksler, CEO and founder of Betches Media, details the digital media brand’s origin story and why it blossomed into a hub for comedy and community designed for women. The episode also features a separate conversation from the SXSW festival that highlighted Variety‘s recent 10 Creators to Watch list.
Listen to the full podcast here
Dreksler traces Betches Media‘s rise from its humble beginnings with two friends in college at a time when Dreksler thought she was on her way to medical school. But the opportunity to become a digital media entrepreneur got in the way. Betches’ early DIY content efforts on Instagram and Facebook were buzzy enough to land the trio a book deal, which proved to be the foundation for a brand that combines comedy and community and lifestyle topics.
“The key to what Betches the brand really represents is — it’s your funny best friend in the group chat, the one that will say the thing with you. And that is what we represent for people,” Dreksler says. “That is what the brand is. The reason why I get up every day is really to make women laugh and to feel seen and understood and all of our thoughts that we’re thinking throughout the day, whether it is the latest pop culture or what’s going on in Bravo, what’s going on in the white House, or what’s going on in your dating life?”
Dreksler has seen the digital media eco-system evolve and grow significantly since Betches first hung out its shingle in 2011.
“Right now, my engagement rate is one of the highest across all women’s media. And now the key metric for me is DMs — what are people sending to each other in their DMs? What share percentage of all of our engagement? So it’s not just engagement rate, it’s about share percentage. So that’s where we’re looking in terms of where I think the industry is going to go,” she says.
The episode also features a separate conversation with members of Variety‘s 10 Creators to Watch list that was recorded March 14 at the SXSW festival in Austin, Texas.
The group speaks frankly with Variety reporter Selome Hailu about living and working online, and the algorithm’s grip on their creative output. It rewards consistency and punishes experimentation, and the psychological cost of chasing it, they said, is real. Creator Vinny Thomas warned of a very specific creative hazard. “There are people who will have gone dead behind the eyes,” he says, “because they know what they have to do and they’ll get up there and do it, but the light is gone.”
Kennedy French contributed to this report.
“Strictly Business” is Variety’s weekly interview podcast featuring conversations with industry leaders about the business of media and entertainment. (Please click here to subscribe to our free newsletter.) New episodes debut every Wednesday and can be downloaded at Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, Spotify, Google Play, SoundCloud and more.
Leave a Reply