More than just cat videos: why Mediacorp is seeking out online creative talent

Singapore’s younger generation hasn’t just been watching online videos in their bedrooms, it turns out they’ve been hard at work making them too. They’re creating their own dramas, music, beauty and game commentary videos. Did you know that there’s a prominent Singaporean content maker who specialises in Machinima - video game animation that's used to tell stories?

We’ve discovered some of the best content makers and video bloggers in Singapore and we’re signing them on through our content creators network Bloomer.

Roughly 300 hours of content is uploaded to youtube every minute. Most of it vanishes from view, never to be seen by more than a handful of people.

At the same time, video content generated by users is now a thoroughly mainstream phenomenon. There are video bloggers and content makers with tens of millions of subscribers and in some cases, billions of views for their content. Many are monetising it, and are making a good living from it.

And while some in the media might deride it as cheap or amateurish, any organisation that dismisses its potential does so at its own peril. In fact, Mediacorp has a completely different view on this.

We’ve already signed on 10 creators, selected from over a thousand. All of them are under 30. We hope to sign on more in the coming months. 

This isn’t a long-term recruitment program. We’re not looking to turn them into future Mediacorp producers. Unless they make a separate deal with us, they’ll retain the rights to their content.

We believe great creativity gets nurtured with the right environment. That’s why we have created facilities for these young creators like !DEA@TheArena for creative ideation and EGG, a studio where they get access to professional equipment and technology.

We aim to give them creative freedom while helping them develop their content into a viable business. This might be as simple as providing them with cameras and locations, which they previously had to rent. But it might also extend to mentorship, and help with commercialising their product. 

Commercialising a social media presence is always tricky, because social media personalities connect in a very different way to a television program. It’s often a hyperlocal audience, which means the topics are often very specific and aimed at a relatively small number of people. It’s the opposite of a television show, for example, which aims to have the broadest appeal.

But often, there’s a very direct connection between the content maker and their audience. If it’s commercialised in the wrong way, it’s easy to lose the authenticity that appealed to viewers in the first place.

That’s why we don’t pressure our creators into commercialising their content. The focus is marrying the right income stream to the right creator. For some creators (those that focus on beauty or video games, for example) there are fairly obvious revenue streams. For others, it might take a little more work to find the right commercial arrangement. Our goal is to find the right match. 

While Mediacorp is starting the Bloomr platform it will eventually bloom through co-creation. A co-created thriving platform that brings together independent storytellers and brands to create engaging and compelling content.