YouTube or Bust: Some Afterthoughts

Last week I attended another fabulous Children’s Media Conference in Sheffield - a great opportunity to catch up with friends old and new, and engage in discussion about the future of the industry.? But as I drove home after the final panel I attended “YouTube or Bust” I had an overriding feeling of frustration.

It’s clear there is a lot of concern about the audience shift to YouTube, but also confusion about what YouTube actually is. There were a range of ideas/requests during the debate; from suggesting public service content should be given an advantage on YouTube, to angry exclaims like “why should YouTube have our content for free?”? I understand the anger.? People’s livelihoods are genuinely at risk, and the world is moving so quickly it can seem impossible to keep up. But to my mind, it felt like a missed opportunity to give the talented bunch of people in that room some practical strategy advice for actually dealing with YouTube.? Emily Horgan and Laura Taylor-Williams tried their best, but I was struck by what seemed to be an overriding toxic sentiment towards YouTube. One that I am fully aware will probably result in some negative comments below.

YouTube is a video sharing platform.? It isn’t a broadcaster in the traditional sense.? It was initially set up for individuals, not corporations or studios to create content and share it with the world.? It levels the playing field, and means a 13 year old boy called Jimmy can upload a video from his bedroom, then one day become Mr Beast: one of the most recognised people in the world, with a net worth of $500 million.? To suggest producers of specific types of content could somehow be given an advantage on YouTube through tweaking the algorithm would totally go against every principle YouTube was ever built on.

One of the ideas that was also raised was that YouTube should be given a quota, a percentage of content shown to UK kids that HAD to be British (I think 50% was mentioned). If that were the quota in the UK, it would follow that the same quota would be applied to the USA's (and other countries') audiences, where 50% would have to be made there.? YouTube is a global platform, where 25% of our views for Gecko’s Garage came from the USA (YouTube's 2nd biggest audience behind India).? We’d be shooting ourselves in the foot by restricting the global reach of our shows if such quotas came in.? We want to export British shows and values, as much as we want our British children watching our content.? YouTube gives us the unrestricted opportunity to think truly globally.

Perturbing during the panel, the discussion about the competition on YouTube seemed to revolve around the American studios who have much bigger budgets to create content.? To my mind, competition isn’t other studios, it’s native YouTube content creators and influencers.? Little was said of these.? These are people who live and breathe YouTube, deeply understand their audience and have refined new, cheap, fast ways of producing authentic content.? Look at Moonbug’s properties and where they all started.? As Rene Rechtman always said, it was “mom n’ pop shops” they were looking for - couples or individuals who had an idea and bootstrapped shows themselves.? Blippi, Cocomelon, Little Baby Bum, Gecko’s Garage: we all had this in common.? Gecko’s Garage was literally started around my kitchen table, with each early episode costing no more than ￡1000.? We used every available tool to reduce animation time (Adobe Character Animator for Gecko himself), and even the Mechanicals were designed to move around on balls so we didn’t have to animate walk cycles.? Those early episodes were as good as they needed to be to test the format.? Channels like 442oons (4m subs)? have honed this method, and manage to turn an animation around in less than 24 hours.

If you are looking at YouTube as a place to put clips from your ￡4 million commissioned series, and aren’t seeing financial results, I can fully understand your frustration but these beautiful, expensive shows weren’t created or designed for YouTube, they were made for TV.? More importantly these shows are missing out on the magic of what makes YouTube special, and gives any YouTube native creator a massive advantage over you: they haven’t been created using YouTube’s secret weapon: data.

YouTube gives you the power to creatively reiterate and improve your show based upon nearly instant data and feedback from your audience.? Episode 1 of Gecko’s Garage is nothing like episode 200.? (Fun activity - Have a look at the Cocomelon channel and click Videos - Oldest and have a look where they started out!)? All of the improvements and changes that were made for Gecko’s Garage, including episode themes were all informed by what our audience, and the wider Youtube audience as a whole was telling us.? I was meticulous about picking apart episode performance, audience retention, what worked and what didn’t.? Our production pipeline was so short and nimble that changes could be made quickly and easily.? As the show grew and started generating (modest) revenue, we knew where we needed to invest in improvements because that’s what the data was telling us.? Early episodes were our minimum viable product, something rough and ready which could be polished, and the world built out as we went.? Characters were introduced based upon a mix of creative decisions, and data research.? If these new characters didn’t resonate, they were tweaked and improved based upon the feedback or cut altogether.

This is a huge shift in mindset for producers who are used to perfecting a 26 episode series before it is released to the world.? To do this on YouTube would be insanity.? You’re talking about releasing a fixed entity that cannot be changed or improved based upon the valuable data that a platform like YouTube gives you.

To those who question the “quality” of YouTube native shows, yes of course there is dubious content on there, but it’s just plain lazy to brand all of Youtube content poor quality.? To me, quality is something that is safe and engaging, but also enriching.? Look at the impact that Cosmic Kids Yoga has had on children around the world, and there are plenty more if you look - check out Solar Balls, Danny Go, Miss Rachel.? Creative and economic contraints can often be the soil for innovation.

My advice to producers, animation companies, production companies who are navigating this shift would be, keep doing what you’re doing - nobody wants you to stop making this premium content.? But why not experiment with some YouTube original content yourselves alongside your usual pipeline?? Look around you at the talent you have in house - what if you gave your animators and creatives half a day a week to work on their own ideas and concepts?? But give them a strict remit: it has to be an idea that is fast and cheap to produce.? Let them experiment with new technologies that help you achieve this goal, and don’t worry about the first episodes being perfect.? Just get something out there.? Blue Zoo are doing this really well with their fabulous YouTube native show Silly Duck.

The upsides of this way of working are clear.? Your creatives will thank you for satisfying their creative outlets, and if you end up with a success on your hands, you have complete control over the property - limited stakeholders to answer to, and 100% IP ownership for you to exploit globally through further distribution deals and merchandise.

We’re living in a time where there is a momentous shift in children’s (and adults) viewing habits.? Whenever an industry is disrupted, there are always winners and losers. But history tells us that those who end up on the positive side of that are those who manage to adapt to the changing landscape.? The genie is out of the bottle and won’t be going back in. Enriching content for children is more important than ever, and I want to see the UK Children’s Media Industry continue to be a dominant force in this.? The revenue piece is challenging (YouTube need to figure out how to properly monetise the YT Kids app for a start), which is why starting as low risk as possible whilst experimenting with what works makes so much sense.? But there is a global audience of children out there that deserve the best content, and if you can figure out the right content and the right strategy for that platform whilst continually improving and reiterating, the rewards can be huge.