While at Nike, she oversaw the creation of the “Nike Training Club,” one of the company’s most popular digital communities. The Detroit native is an industry vet, having spent time at Nike, among other places over the course of her 25-year career. Inevitability thanks to zoomersīack in September of 2020, Discord CEO Jason Citron announced that Tesa Aragones had joined the company as its new CMO. Three months later, Zyper founder Amber Atherton (now in the employ of Discord) led what appears to be the first workshop for brands on Discord. Be Discord’s aversion to ads as it may, behind the scenes it is pursuing a different marketing strategy: reaching out to well-known brands to convince them to join the platform-but not as advertisers, but as operators of branded communities.īefore joining Discord, Archie Prescot was a member of the team at US startup Zyper, a software company that “connects brands with their ‘superfans'” and then sets up branded social networks with them. “Ads are too intrusive, consumers dislike them in general and don’t want their data shared with brands.” Those quotes stem from a Wall Street Journal article with Discord founder Jason Citron, in the wake of which several other outlets have been quick to anoint Discord as the “anti-Facebook”. Merely a passing fad or an indication that Discord has enough in the tank to expand and evolve into a marketing platform? OMR took a long look at Discord, what the app’s brain trust is doing to attract brands, what new business models are being birthed on the platform and what makes the “Slack for Gen Z” tick.

Of the 150M monthly active users, roughly 1/3 are active in communities on Discord dedicated to topics other than gaming: Memes, fashion, cryptocurrencies, shared learning and, even, karaoke. Discord was conceived as purely a chat app for gamers who wanted to communicate with fellow players while playing.

Whats discord used for