TEMPE, Ariz.—Alex Lecomte juggled the duties for two different jobs at The Phoenix Forum this year.
As Director of Sales for the social media marketing firm, 7Veils, the seasoned adult veteran returned to the Tempe Mission Palms to recruit new industry clients at the annual tech conference; and as Director of Marketing for iWantEmpire, his conversations shifted to clip content.
“We didn’t expect the show to have a lot of models and it was a surprise to see so many people from the webcam side,” Lecomte told AVN Saturday. “I ended up talking to a lot of studios and content producers who will open a studio channel on the [iWantClips] platform. Just like long tail kind of stuff.”
But as part of the energetic 7Veils team that was the official social media partner for The Phoenix Forum, Lecomte said interacting with attendees was his first priority.
Wearing director Bree Mills’ signature “Honorary Lesbian” t-shirt, Lecomte finished the three-day show in fifth gear as he hustled from the courtyard to the pool and back again on a busy final day at the Forum, which was produced by payment processing giant CCBill for the 18th straight year.
“It was very important for us to be here and to interact with everyone and to make sure that we update all the connections and the knowledge, so we can be accurate when we do all the social marketing for our clients,” Lecomte continued. “It’s very important for us to understand how the market is, what are the future trends, what we can foresee and interact for ourselves so we can get a little bit more of the details. So we can be closer to the real approach our clients have and to stick to the brand values to share on social media. For us, that’s the main objective.”
Lecomte pointed to the GayVN presence at The Gay Phoenix Forum this year as being impossible to miss—for starters, numerous attendees rocked their black-and-red, GayVN baseball caps on attendees on Day 3.
“It was amazing,” Lecomte said. “iWantGayClips.com—we sponsor the Cybersocket Awards; we sponsor GayVN. We sponsor the Grabby’s in Chicago. But for us, GayVN [in Vegas in January] was really important. We were just about to launch the platform so of course it was important for that. But it’s also because it was a super production.
“So we were very happy to see how AVN is racing to the gay community because the market itself, but also the society is changing and we are finally getting a lot more credibility. That is what makes me very proud and happy that we are finally seeing the gay market is relevant. And AVN so far is the only media that really gave a voice and the power and the real business aspect to really represent it. So GayVN was really intense. It was really, really good. We were really proud and happy business-wise and personal wise.”
Lecomte said the gay presence at the show this weekend “ended up being very interesting.”
“I feel the show was a little bit smaller this year, but it was amazing for us because we could do really quality over quantity,” he continued. “I actually saw much more gay companies and projects than the other years. There’s a lot of people that I didn’t expect to see and they ended up just showing up. Jake Cruz is here. MaleRevenue. For the first time we had a really interesting talk with Manhunt. So yeah the gays were really represented in a very wide spectrum. So it was good. It was not only from the dating, it was also from the video content. Of course for us for social media it was very, very important because we can touch a wide spectrum. I was surprised in a very nice way. I’m super positive about the outcome of this show for us.”
Lauren MacEwen, the chief strategist and CEO of 7Veils, said without question “business has been outstanding.”
She noted that a prominent vet observed “at least 30 percent of the people here I don’t know,” which was a good thing.
“Thirty percent is very accurate,” added Lecomte, who is based in Curitiba, Brazil, near the border of Argentina. “It was a great. And GayVN was well represented here.”
Gavin Lowe, the owner of BangBangBoys.com, liked the “good energy” of the show.
“You can talk to people,” Lowe told AVN. “This is not for the public, it’s for the industry.”
Lowe, who has been in adult for 20-plus years, returned to Phoenix to shop his website to potential buyers as he prepares to transition out of porn.
“I’m trying to sell my business. I started another business and I’m just focusing on that,” Lowe said. “I’ve had this site about 15 years. I used to work with Matt Sterling, which is how I got into the business in the first place. … I have a lot of good product from Brazil. Before when we started it was condoms and the last six, seven years it was bareback with mostly Latin [performers]. GunsBlazing is hosting it, but I own everything—all the content. … The name is good, everybody knows the name.”
Alson Caramel, a 29-year-old Phoenix-based model who debuted with FlavaWorks in October, came to TPF for the first time after hearing about it from his agent Shane Frost.
“I have two scenes that are out and a third one coming out, and I’m going to shoot another one next week in Vegas,” Caramel, who has a Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration, told AVN. He still holds down a full-time day job in logistics in between porn shoots.
“I would like to make it a full-time career actually,” he continued. “I can only do both right now. I think next year when my [logistics] contract is up I would definitely be open to a full-time career.”
Caramel said logistics entails “supply and transportation” work across any field. In January he performed a live sex show with Kink.com at the Hustleball event.
“It was nice, I liked it,” he said.
Despite a weather delay flying out of Pennsylvania on Thursday, Andrea Fioriniello told AVN he had another productive outing in Phoenix, where he spread the word about FanCentro.
“This show is always a good show,” said Fioriniello, who is the business development manager for AdultCentro, which powers FanCentro. “Every time we come here we come back with a lot of business. What I was working here was models who are usually attending the show. They’re not the majority, but still there are models attending the show, affiliates and new leads, basically. New partnerships.
“Now that we have an innovative product like FanCentro that we included also in the affiliate program there are opportunities for us to generate with our affiliates. Whoever has traffic that wants to convert with our offer.”
FanCentro provides more than 10,000 models with tools and channels for Snapchat and Instagram marketing.
“It’s working really well because it gives models an additional revenue stream with Snapchat and Instagram,” Fioriniello continued. “At the same time we help them not only with a billing solution but also with the user management. What models were doing before was keeping a spreadsheet and keeping track of all the users. It was really time consuming. With us they don’t have to do that anymore. Because everything in their admin they have that information at any given time.
“And the re-bills are automatic so they don’t have to think about it, like, ‘Oh, I have to charge this guy again.’ No, we’ll do that for you. You just focus on making your fans happy and generate new content, what they’re good at. Let us work on the tech side and you focus on what you’re good at.”
He said FanCentro has only been around a year—it was launched at AVN 2017—and the results have been incredible.
“It’s been an awesome year,” Fioriniello said. “We see a lot of models coming in everyday signing up and we go from amateur cam models to porn stars. We are adding a lot of porn stars that are also signing up with us, mainly because they talk to each other and they see oh you’re doing this, so it works. Let me sign up and see, and they sign up and start making money with us. That’s really big.”
AVN Hall of Fame studio owner and director, Jules Jordan, makes the annual trip to Tempe a matter of routine.
“It’s a tradition for my company to come out and meet with everybody we do business with face to face,” Jordan said. “To me that’s always a good aspect of doing business. To be able to mingle in this environment any chance you get.”
Jordan noted that while the show did not seem as big as past years, the executives who were present were “the core business people that can get things done.”
His flagship site, JulesJordanVideo.com, accounts for at least 50 percent of his revenue.
“We still do good DVD business at a high wholesale price,” Jordan continued. “We’re still making significant revenue with DVD. As far as web it’s one domain, but we’re maximizing that. This year with the UK age restriction thing, this is an important show to come and meet with the stakeholders in that technology because obviously it’s a territory that we can’t be experts in the legal realm. It’s good to hear from people that are experts in that field because it’s such an ambiguous thing right now.”
Jordan wasn’t the only porn studio mogul in attendance—Jon Blitt, vice president of Mile High Media, also came to the Valley of the Sun.
“The new thing we’re going to be promoting is the stuff we’re doing with [Bellesa.co] because they’re onto something pretty big we hope,” Blitt told AVN. “They have a site that’s geared towards women and so we’re going to create a brand around it.
“We are supposed to be going into production next month. We’ll have some good name directors behind it.”
Ariel McGwire, a Phoenix-based starlet who debuted in August, was making her first appearance at The Forum on Saturday, when she was repping Strokies.com.
“It’s a lot of fun,” said McGwire, the just-turned 21-year-old native of Ann Arbor, Mich. “I’m glad I got into it. I was kind of nervous when I first got into it. I wouldn’t want to do anything else. I’m living the dream.”
McGwire, who is represented by Foxxx Modeling for bookings, said she had done about 20 scenes for studios such as ATK, Nubiles and Evil Angel legend Joey Silvera.
Before porn, she did “random jobs.”
“Waiting tables, cashiering at stores. Nothing really that significant so that’s part of why I got into the business so I could do more with my life, have more opportunities,” she added. “I’ve been able to go places that I wouldn’t have been able to go. I actually came out to Arizona for my first time to shoot. … I already have friends that moved out this way. I was able to check it out for a few days and I was like this is where I want to stay.”
Speaking of not wanting to go back to mainstream, Dave Scott from the Europe-based Sex.cam said there’s no way he wants to do collections again after two-and-a-half years in adult.
“Since I got into the industry marketing and recruitment are way more fun,” Scott told AVN. “Honest to god I can’t go back to a normal job.”
Scott said that Sex.cam is the rebranded North American version of XLoveCam, which has been around for 10 years.
“This name is more appealing in terms of search,” Scott said. “We already have the platform that people love but that name wasn’t really penetrating as much as this has. People searching tend to search sex and cams.”
Rather than do topless dodgeball on the last day, The Phoenix Forum this time showcased a buck wild wet t-shirt contest on the pool deck that was sponsored by MojoHost and MC’ed by attorney Corey Silverstein.
On what turned out to be an 85-degree afternoon, Melody Wylde, the January 2018 Hustler magazine cover girl, narrowly edged out Flirt4Free cam star Lindsey Banks in the delightfully dirty competition that saw more than a dozen models compete for the cash prize.
During the final dance-off, Wylde and Banks ended up in an extended make-out session in front of the judges. Then when Wylde was announced the winner, she grabbed the microphone and declared she would split the cash with Banks, shouting “we’re both winning!”
Banks replied, “BBLU, hoe! Bad bitches fucking link up!”
Watching the proceedings from the water, MojoHost CEO Brad Mitchell concluded, “I think this is better than dodgeball was, that’s my personal experience…”
