Microdrama giant COL Group has added former Paramount and Disney execs to its ranks, and expanded Timothy Oh’s role.

The Shenzen-listed company is building out its American business with the addition of Jason Ander, who will be Head of U.S. Partnerships in Oh’s international business division, with Eileen Low becoming Head of Partnerships and Sales for Asia. Oh has been named Chief Marketing Officer for FlareFlow, a role he’ll have alongside his post as Singapore-based COL’s General Manager for International Business.

COL will also hire a Head of Marketing and a Head of Content and Operations for its U.S. business next month to build out microdrama app FlareFlow.

Ander has experience working at TikTok, Paramount and Hulu. At Paramount, he began as a Director of Brand Partnerships and rose to Senior Director, Digital Strategy, while he reached a senior integrated marketing role at streamer Hulu during a nine-year spell.

Low was most recently an Affiliate Sales Manager for Canal+ and before that was a Sales Development Executive for Disney in the now-defunct Disney Media & Entertainment Distribution division.

Oh’s new post comes after he spent a year pushing international initiatives in distribution, localization, creator partnerships and platform expansion. He was behind COL’s ‘Microdrama-in-a-Box solution, which allows content owners to acquire an off-the-shelf vertical video app, and spearheaded the move beyond scripted dramas through microdramas such as SupermodelMe.

COL, which operates microdrama apps such as ReelShort, is pushing FlareFlow towards a ‘Vertical 2.0’ strategy – in effect expanding beyond romantic microdramas and into a broader content ecosystem of live-action productions, creator-led stories, branded entertainent, new genres, AI-assisted workflows and “selective” AI productions.

FlareFlow has struck international partnerships with the likes of European vertical platform Shorts (Luni) and Southeast Asian creators and producers.

“The vertical content models that work in China and the U.S. will not necessarily work for every market adopting vertical entertainment,” said Oh. “Our focus now is building a more robust strategy across content, partnerships, localisation, and accessibility to make vertical content more accessible than ever to audiences globally. The only way forward is change.”