Inside X alternative Spill and its pitch deck for brands to reach a multicultural audience

It’s been nearly a year since Spill debuted as a safe haven from Twitter (now X), and as a place that put Black and multicultural creators at its core. Now the social media platform is making a push to create more sponsorship opportunities for brands. The platform, launched by former Twitter executives including Alphonzo Terrell, who was one of thousands unceremoniously discharged from Twitter after Elon Musk’s takeover last year, debuted its first official livestreaming product called “Tea Parties” at AfroTech in Austin last week. At AfroTech, a conference dedicated to tech, investing and wealth-building for the Black community, Terrell showed off “Tea Parties,” through which celebs and creators host livestream chat sessions. These live videos could be a jumping-off point for more sponsorship opportunities, according to Terrell, the Spill co-founder who spoke with Ad Age this week. “We’re in the final stages, so I can’t reveal quite yet who, but a couple of CPG brands are working on programs that blend the IRL and the URL,” Terrell said, pointing to ambitions to drive commerce through Spill, after the first class of advertisers relied mostly on media and entertainment brands. Look back: Former Twitter workers launch app Spill Spill is a mobile-only app with a visual design, where people “spill the tea,” a common euphemism for sharing opinions, hot takes and secrets. The app has similar mechanics as X (formerly Twitter) where contributors build followers and share links, GIFs and memes. There also are trends and hashtags. When Spill first launched last year, it was widely viewed as a refuge for marginalized communities that were no longer comfortable with Twitter after Musk bought the company and changed the moderation policies. Spill’s founders sensed an opportunity to open a space that could attract, say, Black Twitter and other communities that often were responsible for some of the most culturally resonant trends across social media and the wider internet. Ad Age A-List & Creativity Awards Final deadline approaching for annual program Enter here In a recent pitch deck from Spill, shared with Ad Age, there is a clear advertising proposition built into the app, and a unique audience. There are 185,000 users to date, and there is a waitlist to onboard more people before the app eventually opens out of beta, according to the deck. The user base is active, too, according to the deck, with “Spillionaires,” as they are called, opening the app seven times a day on average, generating an average of 40,000 Spill posts and comments a day. (For comparison, Threads, the X rival that Instagram launched this summer, recently reported close to 100 million monthly users, according to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, but there have been questions about how vibrant that Twitter alternative is after a hot start. Before it was bought by Musk, Twitter publicly reported about 240 million daily monetizable users, which was a metric for the community that was eligible to receive advertising. Under Musk, X is not beholden to public reporting about the rate of activity.) At a time when major brands and media agencies have made promises to support Black-owned media, Spill has come along with a digital proposition that challenges those same media companies and brands to engage with this new online community. The user base is 93% Black or of African descent, according to the pitch deck. Also read: Inside the state of DE&I media investment Spill offers the usual mobile ad units that can be found on other social media apps, such as first-look ads. The “First Spill” is the first piece of media a user sees when they open the app. Sponsors can also take over the “Spillboard,” a pull-down trending section in the app. There also are polls and games, on top of bespoke activations such as Tea Parties, the new livestreaming feature. There also are “Live Spills,” which have become one of the more recognizable events inside the app, where users can watch the same show at the same time. Spill held watch parties for Netflix’s “They Cloned Tyrone,” Apple TV+’s “Swagger,” and Lionsgate’s “The Blackening.” [Read the pitch deck below or here] Spill is developing its own language and culture around the idea of “spilling the tea,” with “tea parties” and “Spillionaires,” the name given to active members. The platform is one of several to come from the creative castoffs who left Twitter. Other ex-Tweeps, as former Twitter employees are called, have tried to start rival apps, hoping to remake the social media landscape, but already one of those projects failed. The app, called Pebble, also from former Twitter execs, shuttered last month. Meanwhile, Spill is still raising pre-seed financing, which recently hit $5 million after bringing in $2 million this week from Collide Capital, and it is curating a diverse community of creators at one of the only Black-owned social media sites. Spill is still invite-only, which gives it an air of exclusivity for the users, creators and advertisers. Creating the Spilliverse Advertisers are finding their way into the “Spilliverse,” said Kenya Parham, global VP of community and partnerships at Spill. “Watching the advertiser reactions to Spill as a new ad platform, even in beta, there are partners including Lionsgate, Netflix, VH1, Paramount+, Sony,” Parham said, “and that helps us actualize our vision of creating a really amazing advertiser and creator ecosystem. And it does create business viability for us, and it also lays the foundation for how we’re going to be able to credit and compensate creators.” Parham and Terrell said that all advertiser campaigns come with creator components that could spread the wealth to that part of the community. They are “making sure that when advertisers come to the platform, that creators win, just like the platform wins,” Parham said, “and so they are right there, lock and step with us, and so we make that very clear before the activation even takes place.” Also read: The latest creator and influencer marketing trends One early celebrity user is actress Kerry Washington, who last week hosted a livestream to help promote the new Tea Party feature. “Like a lot of us, I have had moments of feeling like frustrated, right, with some of the activity that happens on some of the other social platforms,” Washington said during her first Spill livestream, which was accompanied by followers sending flurries of emoji teacups into her chat to shout their approval. “I love the idea of a Black-owned social space. I love that this is a place where we can come together from marginalized communities and be family, because we should be able to be our social selves in a social world.” One of the first ads on Spill came from Lionsgate’s “The Blackening,” a comedy film that ran in June. Spill worked with Horizon Media on the campaign, which included having members of the cast participate on Spill. “It’s a very therapeutic outlet, especially for those of diverse backgrounds who were on Twitter heavily, who don’t want to be involved with all the mess that’s going on there,” said Carlton Njoku, associate director of multicultural business solutions at Horizon Media. Njoku worked on the “The Blackening” media campaign and helped bring it to Spill. “The Blackening” was an almost entirely all-Black cast, and it was crucial to set the right tone for the marketing, Njoku said. “We wanted to make sure that the message was very clear, that this film was for us by us,” Njoku said. There was a 98% positive sentiment from organic engagement on Spill, Njoku said. “It was from users on the app who praised the film for being the first paid media partnership on the Spill platform,” Njoku said. Among the activations with the cast from “The Blackening,” there was a special “Sip or Spill,” which is a way for users to ask questions, and the stars either sip to pass or spill and dish on the topic. “The Blackening” also ran a “How Black Are You?” poll, Njoku said. “Just being in the Spill app, it just feels like people are a lot more uplifting and positive,” Njoku said, and agencies and brands are paying attention. “They’re definitely a hot topic here at the agency, and overall just because it’s an emerging space,” Njoku said. Spill also is building its own brand and it has promoted itself during cultural and social moments that had special resonance among its users, Parham said. Last month, when the U.S. was talking about the Nationwide Emergency Alert Test that activated almost all phones, Spill was quick to reach its audience with its own message. “We released a very voicey push notification that said, ‘Hey, did that scare y’all because it scared us, too,’” Parham said. “And that was a huge viral moment for Spill because it was about connecting around shared experiences, which I think made everyone say, ‘Wow, this app is human, this app is breathing and alive and experiencing life like I am too.’”

Inside X alternative Spill and its pitch deck for brands to reach a multicultural audience

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