Marketing in Hollywood is often viewed through the lens of huge budgets, flashy red carpets, and sky-high commercials. But any entertainment marketer will tell you that when it comes to selling a movie or series, the running game is just as important.

That premise is crucial to the business model of SGG Media, a startup agency that represents an army of social media accounts serving verticals like athletics and lifestyle. Founded by 28-year-old Troy Paul, SGG occupies a subtle but increasingly powerful space for entertainment marketing, one that amplifies content through a network of roughly 3,000 “micro-influencers,” whose combined reach is estimated at 270 million eyeballs. More than half of those accounts are obsessively dedicated to sports, from pages that follow leagues, geographic markets, and specialized fandoms. Its philosophy is simple: sports culture. is pop culture.

Many major studios agree and have joined SGG as clients over the past 3 years (Amazon MGM, A24, Universal, Paramount, Lionsgate and Sony Pictures) on titles such as “The Odyssey,” “Scary Movie” and “Anaconda.” A bank of premium advisors doesn’t hurt either. Former Imagine Entertainment co-chairman Michael Rosenberg joined SGG’s board of directors last October, along with audience guru Kevin Goetz and “Little Miss Sunshine” producer Daivd Friendly.

Paul conceived of SGG Media when he was a senior at Notre Dame High School in Sherman Oaks, California, and believes social media marketing is undergoing a paradigm shift.

“We’re moving away from high-production user-generated content toward amplification models. A few years ago, a major studio would produce a commercial with a celebrity, post it to Instagram, and pray it would go viral organically. That, or they’d spend on Meta and X ads to boost it,” Paul said. “Now, an agency like SGG can amplify an ad in real time to authorized influencer accounts followed by real fans.”

SGG’s methods fall into the hot topic of “clipping,” all too prevalent in the music industry, where only the most attention-grabbing segments of content are promoted to widespread attention. Paul says the days of big investments in paid media are going out of style, and his micro-influencers (many of whom don’t appear on camera or promote themselves as central to their accounts) can earn by dictating what’s relevant to their followers and sharing it like a hive.

These methods are also “economically prudent” for the studies, Goetz said. Varietyand go a long way toward earning the trust of Generation Z and the growing Generation Alpha (the ones driving the box office, as numerous research reports and output data have shown in recent years).

“Authenticity is very important to young people in what they watch, read and interact with. It has to come from a trusted source, and a sponsored ad doesn’t fall into that category no matter how you look at it,” says Goetz, founder and CEO of entertainment research firm Screen Engine. “Generation Z and future Alphas are cynical. They have grown up in a world of tremendous polarization, seeing a country divided and having little trust in government and corporations. They are aware that they are being sold everything under the sun.”

As the agency continues to expand, Paul is currently seeking traditional media content veterans to help solidify SGG’s place in the new social marketing ecosystem. When you have the ball, as many sports teach us, you keep running.