Tony Pu is a Product Marketing Lead at Kling AI, leading its community and partnership initiatives, driving product adoption and empowering millions of creators and industry professionals. Previously, he led the explosive user growth of the viral editing app CapCut. Before entering tech, Tony was a film producer and creative director, with hands-on experiences in film development, script consultation, and commercial production, giving him deep insight into both platform dynamics and the creator mindset.

How many years have you been a judge?

This is my first year!

What excited you about judging for the Telly Awards?

What excites me the most about judging for the Telly Awards is the opportunity to see how storytelling continues to evolve across platforms and technologies. With hands-on experience doing creative work, working with creators, and marketing creative tools, I’m particularly interested in how new tools and distribution channels are bringing more possibilities to content creators and how audiences engage with their content. I’m excited to recognize work that demonstrates creative excellence, resonates with audiences, and showcases how stories are created and shared in today’s media landscape.

What project are you most proud to have worked on?

I’m most proud of my achievements at CapCut. As the first hire of the CapCut team in the US, I was able to spearhead the exponential growth of the product in social followings, creator community, and active users, and eventually helped CapCut become a viral app essential to content creators all over the world. From this experience, I was also able to consolidate work processes, systems and methodologies, which have helped me tremendously with repeatable success in my roles and career paths later on.

What do you look for to determine excellence in video?

When evaluating excellence, I look for a strong balance of aesthetics, storytelling, and purpose. Audiovisually, the work should demonstrate thoughtful design and artistic vision. Meanwhile, the content should be meaningful and socially relevant, showing an understanding of its audience and cultural context. Technical excution, especially from innovative use of tools, also plays a key part. Last but not least, compelling performance and authentic expression are essential for the content to create a bigger and longer-lasting impact.

What are your current roles and responsibilities and what do you love most about your job?

Currently, I’m Product Marketing Lead and Head of Community & Partnerships at Kling AI, a leading AI creative platform. My roles include planning and executing product marketing strategies, growing the platform’s social media followings, partnering with creators, studios, and other leaders in relevant communities and industries — all channeling down to growing the platform’s adoption in terms of users and revenue. What I love the most about my job is being able to empower millions of global creators and industry professionals to bring their visions to life, especially for projects that would have been compromised before due to budget or resource constraints. While I pursue success in my career and help grow the platform, I feel this is meaningful work that will make professional content creation accessible to everyone.

What initiatives or projects are you working on now that excite you?

Currently, I’m leading product marketing of Kling AI in the global market. Besides what I love the most about my job — empowering everyone to tell their stories — I also find the opportunity to compete in a new market very exciting. With the help of AI, people nowadays have an overwhelming number of options for their tools. When there are so many products competing in the same niche, the big challenge for a marketer is to figure out the unique positioning and advantages of your product. At Kling AI, I’ve been running an innovative way of creator marketing, which turns traditional, transactional influencer marketing into deeper and longer relationships for advocacy, and have achieved close to a billion organic views from creators advocating for us in the span of 15 months. With the industry moving so fast, I feel excited every day, ready to embrace new opportunities and challenges.

In your experience, what is a significant change you are seeing happen in the video, television, and/or film industry, and what insight can you share about how to navigate it?

The most significant change is the democratization of the content industry. Traditionally, content making is gatekept to a small group of industry professionals who have spent decades learning and working on the crafts. But now, with the help of technologies, anyone can be a so-called “filmmaker” or “content creator”. Whether the goal is to produce high-quality films, or to build original IPs, creators nowadays have all the means to pursue their creative dreams without having to worry about big budgets or lack of resources. This allows for a lot more content to be made and a lot more stories to be told. So, whenever someone asks me if they should make a film or build an IP, I tell them, “just go ahead and do it. The time is now!”