Interview: Spawn On Me’s Kahlief Adams
Kahlief Adams is the creator and host of gaming podcast Spawn On Me. He recently hosted and produced the Black in Gaming Awards this year and won the Excellence in Media Award. In my interview with Kahlief, he talks about Spawn On Me’s audience, media access for creators of color, and the PR value of pitching to podcasts.
1. What can you tell us about the Spawn On Me audience? What is the typical listener?
Spawn On Me is a gaming podcast that shares opinions on news, reviews, and stories of the day while having interviews with people from all levels of the industry. Those all come through a prism of the Black experience which informs those conversations. I would say the typical listener is someone who is looking to get away from the status quo conversations they hear and see from most media outlets out there that don’t and can’t share stories from those angles.
2. How has the podcast evolved since you first started in 2014 and what should people know about Spawn On Me now, especially recently becoming part of the Fanbyte Podcast Network?
The biggest change came around a year and half ago when our three-person team split up and I went solo with the show. I think the other part that changed a bit was us going from a strictly audio format to having a video component to the show. That was a HUGE new direction for how I translate my/our experiences to our listeners. Joining Fanbyte just really gave us both some financial stability and a much bigger platform to get our show out, since they have so many people tuned into their site.
3. In the last few months you were interviewed or appeared on podcasts on Game Informer, Polygon, USgamer, and VentureBeat, to name a few. You’ve talked about creating the kind of content that you are interested in, but also addressed the industry about giving Black media more access to be able to create coverage. What can PR professionals do to work with Spawn On Me? What kind of pitches would you like to see more of? How would PR work in your ideal world?
As a content creator the things I need really fall into a couple of buckets that PR can specifically address. The biggest and most important bucket is access. Our show is a pretty interesting unicorn in a lot of ways. Our numbers—although growing really well—aren’t in the same league of some bigger outlets. But in my opinion, not only do we do a better job of being able to cover a wider swath of the industry, but there are literally maybe five outlets run by people of color that get the breadth and depth of guests that we do. We’ve had everyone from one-person indie studios to folks like Aaron Greenberg, Head of Marketing from Xbox, on our show. It is EXTREMELY rare to see an outlet like that get those kinds of guests while also talking about the many important conversations that we tackle. So for me, we want to work with as many PR folks as we can. We want to be on those lists for early access and high-level interviews with multiple facets of the dev and C-level parts of the industry without feeling like we’re still trying to beat down doors to rooms that at this point we’ve absolutely earned access to. Also, I totally understand how inundated most PR folks are in the space. I’ve worked on a couple of game launches with N++ and Tacoma and had a glimpse into how some of it works. I know how difficult it can be when you have so many incoming requests. I would just hope that at this point Spawn On Me wouldn't have to fight so hard to get things because the quality of the work we’ve done in the past six years shows that we’ve earned to be here.
4. What do you think is the biggest miss with PR regarding stories about people of color? What do people get consistently wrong or things you see a lot that make you sigh? What should they be doing instead?
I don’t think a lot of PR folks take into account the other obstacles that are in play when growing something as a person of color. On the media side there are very few avenues to grow and get past some of the initial doors (especially if you are independent). As a podcast especially, industry metrics are a very weird thing to track because of how downloads work, etc., so unless you are pulling in huge numbers you’ll get overlooked for coverage. If you’re on the content creator side there are so many more things in play as to why your potential growth can be stifled there too. There aren’t specific things that I look at that reflect badly on me or my interactions with PR in that sense, but the way that POC folks have to navigate an industry that doesn’t understand the value that we bring can create weird gaps from a PR perspective on how to bring our community good opportunities and leaves us out of some spaces as well.
5. You recently hosted the 4th Annual Black in Gaming Awards, but also won the Media Award (Congrats!). What was that experience like, and where do you see the future of Spawn On Me and the work that you do?
First, thank you! Second, it was a pretty surreal experience. I was asked to both host and produce the show which was not only a first for me in terms of crafting the look and feel of an awards show, but it was also something that I’ve had on my bucket list. I’ve jokingly said on the record that I want to make a version of the Geoff Keighley’s Game Awards but from a POC-centric perspective. I love what Geoff has grown that show into over the years, but it still needs more of us and our cultural influence weaved into it, OR we just need to have our own show that does that. The BIG Awards can be that show in some ways once we get more resources dedicated towards it, and I hope I can help bring more of my vision to it in the future. I was also pretty humbled to be awarded the media honors. Spawn On Me has given me a purpose and I wouldn’t have most of the things I have in this life currently without it. My current job at Intel, and most of my industry friends and colleagues, all come from this dream I had of talking about games which started from me talking into a microphone from a kitchen table six short years ago. Six years later, I’m winning an award in a class of Black visionaries and pioneers like Reggie Fils-Aime, Mike Pondsmith, and Kimberly Bryant. I pinch myself often thinking about how that will live forever or as long as we pass that history down.
6. Do you have advice for PR looking to get their clients and brands featured in more podcasts? How is it different pitching podcasts versus traditional news outlets? What different opportunities are there for companies appearing on podcasts that they wouldn’t otherwise get on a traditional news outlet?
There are SO MANY podcasts that are dying to connect with devs, PR reps, and others so that they can connect to games they care about for coverage. Podcasts are still in a weird place that has been legitimized by lots of big-named celebs jumping into the space. Podcasters have to find good ways of sharing their value to PR in better ways as well. I always pitch us to say “Spawn On Me is connected to audiences that both are super engaged with your product AND we are intimately in touch with a whole segment of consumers/gamers/audience that the larger gaming industry often ignores.” If you come on our show we open you up to potentially so many more folks that you would have never gotten in front of.”
The other biggest boon for podcasts is being able to give your clients not only a space to potentially advertise your game or product, but also the opportunity to humanize the people making a thing an audience cares about. I only bring on people whose game I really want to know more about or people who are interesting to me in some way. No other medium like podcasts or streams give those parts of the industry the time or ability to give people space to be exactly who they want to be for a fairly long stretch of time. That time lets guests properly convey exactly what their product is for an audience ready to hear it. If you add in a host that is knowledgeable and who cares about the health of the industry, then you have potential magic in a bottle for the world to experience.
Follow Kahlief Adams on Twitter.