What I learnt in the first 12 months of starting a media company

Hey

I’m Dev.

I started Kyra TV with three of my closest friends.

We’ve created three breakout digital shows. PAQ, a show about Fashion. Bad Canteen a show about Food. Greatness a show about Female Positivity and Adventure.

What we've tried to do at Kyra TV is own every part of the process. From conception, to casting and contracting the talent, to production, to distribution across our channels. Everything that we do, we do in-house.

We now have 50 people in the company.

We’ve partnered with the likes of Adidas, Nike, Converse, HP and many more on co-branded content across our channels.

2017 was an incredible and extremely exciting start.

2018 is the year I hope Kyra TV puts its name on the map as one of the biggest players in video.

Last Thursday actually marks the one year anniversary, the birthday, of Kyra… One year exactly since we first launched it.

It’s been the maddest year of my life, so I’m going to try and distill what I’ve learnt about our audience and our industry. My hope is that some of you may find parts of it interesting. Beyond that I can’t offer much else.

I've distilled these lessons into 12 points, see here we go...

LESSON ONE: Be Transparent

The first thing we learnt when we tried to make money and integrate brands into our content: this audience doesn’t mind being advertised to.

They are smart and they enjoy consuming content. They understand that the content doesn’t make itself and it isn’t cheap. They understand the pay-off.

Don’t try and fool them. You will get called out.

If they’re being explicitly told that they’re being advertised to they’ll appreciate the transparency. It can work in the favour of the advertiser, increasing the positive sentiment towards the brand as they are a facilitator for the content they are about to receive.

On PAQ we partnered with Converse to help them launch their new trainer.

Instead of being sneaky, we actually called the episode: “Making an advert for Converse”.

It is our second most viewed episode ever. Highest in terms of likes.

And ultimately it made people buy Converse shoes.

In fact people appreciated the transparency so much they even came back to the comments to tell us they'd bought a pair.

Off the back of the success of this campaign, we’ve literally just finished another campaign with Converse.

LESSON TWO: YouTube is a direct substitute for TV

In the same way I would come home when I was younger and switch on the TV and binge Nickelodeon or MTV until I got called for dinner.

This generation is doing exactly the same thing.

They finish school, college, work… they come home they open their smartphone or laptop and sit in front of it until they are either told to turn it off by their parents or it's time for bed.

The behaviour is identical.

LESSON THREE: But the content isn’t the same as TV

Yes, the consumers' behaviour may be the same as TV behaviours, but the content that they’re consuming is completely different.

Content on YouTube doesn’t need to look like TV content to be successful.

In fact, one thing we’ve learnt is that in some cases it’s quite the opposite.

Some of the most successful channels are self shot.

Self shot, hand held and more vloggy style content has a feeling of intimacy and authenticity that TV never offered its viewers…

That’s not to say that high production can’t work... we just learnt quickly not to overlook the intimacy that this generation desires from content.

LESSON FOUR: This audience wants to be entertained

Dude Perfect, The Slo Mo Guys, Lele Pons...

What’s the commonality? They are all centred around humour and entertainment.

Exactly like TV.

We have to realise, 90% of people are watching it to kill some time, wind down a bit and escape their day-to-day life.

It was something that myself and my company realised quite fast… that if we are being honest with ourselves, YouTube audiences respond best to lighthearted entertainment.

Making meaningful, purpose-led content is great but there’s nothing to be ashamed about in creating content that simply entertains.

LESSON FIVE: This audience left Facebook ages ago

Look I don’t have anything concrete in terms of statistics to back this up.

And honestly it’s just my experience…

I work with hundreds of young people every single week.

And I can categorically tell you, that I have not spoken to one in the past year that actually uses Facebook. NOT ONE.

There’s a lot of industry speculation right now around this subject and the potential decline. I just want to tell you from my real world experience, that for this audience Facebook is long gone.

LESSON SIX: Instagram is LIFE 

In the same vein as my last point, this is just my personal experience…

But Instagram is by far the most powerful social media network the world has ever seen.

Speaking to these young people, it is jaw dropping how much weight is put on Instagram by this generation.

The Instagram profile (hard posts) is the definition of a person's identity

Instagram stories are an ephemeral window into a person's life, in a slightly less controlled, more organic way.

Followers and likes are a direct measure of how relevant, popular and important somebody is.

And look, I’m not here to pass judgement on if this is good or bad, but I will say to everyone reading this: take note, Instagram is a really, really big deal and it’s so much deeper than just posting photos.

LESSON SEVEN: This audience loves ‘YouTubers’

When we first started making content for Youtube. I confess that we used to turn our noses up at the “YouTubers”... because we’re idiots, we couldn’t understand why young people loved them so much… and just put it down to one of the mysteries of the internet.

Your Jake Pauls

Your PewdiPies

Your David Dobriks

Your Zoellas

We had watched some of their content, we thought we understood it and we made our minds up.

We assumed their audiences came from getting to the platform first.

I can’t tell you how wrong we were… and how much respect I have for them and their teams now.

What we’ve come to understand over the past year is that some of these creators are nothing shy of complete genius. They are media powerhouses, with intricate and refined strategies that are driving levels of engagement never seen before in our industry.

Take Logan Paul. Say you what you want about the controversy. Let’s look at the facts. In December he generated 320 million video views. He creates a 15 minute TV Show every single day. Even his dog has 3.4m Instagram followers and generates 500,000 likes per post...

Let's take another example; KSI gained more subscribers than Complex, Vice, Buzzfeed and Vox COMBINED in the last 30 days...

These are some of the most innovative people in the media industry. And unlike the past, they are beginning to realise it as well and are now beginning to seriously monetise it.

Every media house in the world right now should be paying attention to them, watching and learning from them every single day.

I know we are.

LESSON EIGHT: This audience listens to and values people over brands

Leading on from that point.

Since the dawn of media, individuals and influencers have always been at the forefront of entertainment; David Beckham, the Spice Girls, Gordon Ramsay…

Beforehand, these figures needed media owners to reach their audiences… but today that is definitely not the case.

The Kardashians … the Paul brothers... these are people and media giants rolled into one.

Just two months ago, Will Smith started vlogging and has already amassed a huge audience of close to 1 million subscribers on his channel.

I’ve learnt that this generation expects to connect with influencers directly, and if you can facilitate that connection - you will win.

A lot of our business strategy at Kyra is centred around putting people at the forefront of our content proposition.

LESSON NINE: Your audience is a manifestation of the content you produce

This one is glaringly obvious, but I find it pretty interesting.

If the content you publish is negative, you will breed an audience fuelled by negativity. Haters in the comments. Low sentiment ratios.

If your content is positive, uplifting, inspirational, aspirational, you’re likely to receive the same response from the audience.

If your audience is intelligent and thoughtful, you will see intelligent, thoughtful people gravitating towards it.

And so on, and so on...

It sounds obvious, but for me it was somewhat of a revelation.

In a world where so much is reliant on the kind of audience you attract, this has been a key factor to our success with advertisers and has a huge impact on the kind of content we produce every day.

The proof is out there, go and have a look at video publishers and their comments, I think you’ll agree that their audiences are a direct mirror of what they put out into the world.

LESSON TEN: Long term value comes from consistent and regular programming

When we first started, we were constantly hunting for a viral hit… the mythical unicorn of the internet that everyone strives for.

But after creating and publishing hundreds of pieces of content consistently for a year, the question I am still asking myself is - does it really build long term value?

I’m unconvinced.

The conclusion I’ve come to is that what will ultimately win, is creating quality content CONSISTENTLY and incrementally building a passionate army of fans that are unwavering in their loyalty and affinity to your brand, channel or content.

I’d take 200 videos with positive, steady growth over one big Gangnam Style hit any day.

What I’ve basically learnt is: viral hits do not build community and that is essentially all that matters.

LESSON ELEVEN: This audience has REAL spending power

So many Brand Managers ask me 'but how much money do these young people really have?'

For PAQ, we set up a Pop Up shop in London and put out some posts online the day before inviting them to come down and check out the shop.

Now to put this in perspective… I had no fucking idea what was going to happen. Up until this point, everything… the followers, the comments, the engagements… were just pixels on a screen, ones and zeros. So I was 100% ready to turn up the next day and find a ghost town.

Well…at 7am we had 100 people already queuing outside the shop. At 9am when we opened it was up to around 500, lines of people queuing around the corner to meet the people they watch every week on our show.

People flew in from Germany, Sweden and even Malaysia just to come to the shop.

My learnings from this were so valuable:

This audience has access to money and they are very much REAL. I learnt that digital audiences can transcend into real world purchases very easily.

LESSON TWELVE: Length doesn’t matter to the audience, it matters to the advertiser

I remember when we started producing content, speaking to dozens of people to try and understand what length our videos should be.

So many people told me so many different things.

But here is what I’ve worked out myself over the past 6 months:

It doesn’t matter if your video is 30 seconds, 5 minutes or half an hour.

If the content is good, the audience will watch it.

We have the same view through rates across our content, no matter what the length.

However, the length of the content is very, very important when it comes to making effective branded or sponsored content.

The bottom line is this: The longer you can engage an audience... the more right you have to show them an advertiser's message.

So yeah, those are the twelve lessons I’ve learnt in a year of business in media.

I’m sure that so much of what I've written you know already, but for me they are some of the most valuable learnings in the world.

I’m sure there will be plenty more lessons to come in 2018, so I’ll maybe see you next year with some new ones.

Thanks for reading.

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Dev

[email protected]