From Trick Shots to Trick $hots

While procrastinating on doing something productive, I fell down the YouTube rabbit hole and started watching videos by a group called Dude Perfect. While I didn’t really know much about them, they are a very popular channel with over seven and a half million subscribers. They produce a number of different types of videos, but the ones I was drawn too featured the various members of the group doing extreme trick shots, including the long distance basket shots that they became known for.

The group originated as a group of roommates attending Texas A&M who made a few videos doing trick shots in the back yard. Those early videos gained notoriety online and they were featured on morning tv and talk shows. Dude Perfect leveraged their exposure into a full-time gig. The group gets revenue from ads on YouTube, but they have also partnered with a number of prominent brands to created content or in-video advertising.

I was talking with my sister about this. She is a big fan of video games and follows several channels that produce videos and other content about games. She mentioned several instances where channels have grown to create numerous specialty channels and eventually hire other content producers to work for their company.

I suppose this blog post is a bit of a reflection on how fast media can change. YouTube has only been around for ten years, and in that time, a number of well known personalities and brands have emerged from the medium. I sort of wonder if this growth will continue and online video sharing will eventually replace television as the primary means of delivering video content. Or will it eventually fall away when the next big online platform emerges.

It is interesting to see how big channels, such as Dude Perfect, have used their exposure on YouTube to leverage other opportunities. The group has a smart phone game. They sell branded merchandise. They engage in those corporate partnerships. In many ways, their brand is still primarily associated with online videos, but it is not exclusively so.

That these changes have happened in such a seemingly short time, it makes me wonder how some of the more traditional news and current affair programming will go in the future. As a student in journalism school, we are told that online content is the future. But much like the growth of entities like Dude Perfect, everything is happening with little precedent.

So yeah, that should be fun!