The Eight P’s of YouTube Success…Revealed!
CARTOON HANGOVER, THE FIRST YEAR.
The Eight P’s of YouTube Success…Revealed!
Reflections on the 1st birthday of Cartoon Hangover.
by Fred Seibert, President & Founder, Frederator Studios & Cartoon Hangover
As we all continue to celebrate the new year (Happy New Year, Everybody!), here at Cartoon Hangover we’re celebrating a great year. 2013 was our first full year as a channel on YouTube. And what a year it was!
17 million viewers around the world have tuned in 79 million times, and watched 245 million minutes (!) of our programming. We amassed 1.4 million subscribers across our six channels*. Cartoon Hangover was the second most subscribed channel of YouTube’s Original Channel Initiative.
Any way you slice it, that’s success. As one of our London colleagues put it, “Cutting through the noise on YouTube to build a large fanbase is getting tougher every day, what you just did will prove to the rest of the world what I already know — you know your shit ;-)”
Which brings me to my first big revelation: Success IS possible on YouTube. We’ve proved it. And we did it all without resorting to “cats on skateboards” or Epic Fails, or any of the stuff YouTube is notorious for.
No doubt you’d like to know how we did it, so you can do it too. OK. I’ll tell you. In the next few paragraphs, I’m going to pull aside the curtain and reveal our secrets to attaining success on YouTube. Here comes the Frederator Studios YouTube playbook.
THE EIGHT P’s
The first thing I did when I knew we were going to launch Cartoon Hangover was Panic.
Panic is often my first P. It sharpens the brain. I knew we were venturing into uncharted waters (for me, anyway) and a lot was riding on the outcome.
I had been a successful radio and cable TV programmer, and TV animation producer, and had already contributed to an earlier era of internet video. But, in just seven years, online was already changing into a new arena and I wanted to get it right. Panic made me examine and toss away a lot of useless assumptions. Like the idea others had that YouTube was just an ADD playground — a repository for an endless parade of disjointed videos. And that to be successful you had to go “viral.”
I studied what was working on YouTube in 2012, and concluded that both those ideas were old hat or had never really been true at all. “Virality” is always a welcome phenomenon. (Who can argue with everybody seeing your video?) And it may have been crucial to push through the clutter and make a splash on YouTube in 2008, when the site was new and had “only” 38 million monthly viewers. But today, with 4 billion videos watched every day and 1 billion viewers every month, YouTube has matured into a platform that has become home to genuine entertainment destinations for millions of internet regulars — similar to (although substantially larger than) what Cable TV channels morphed into in the 80s.
To make it in that environment we didn’t need a novelty one-off. We needed the other seven P’s: Preparation; Programming; Production; Positioning; Promotion; Presentation; & Personalization.
PREPARATION
Cartoon Hangover spent a busy pre-launch year, laying the groundwork for what we believed we wanted to be. Planning the productions was certainly a large part of our time. Meeting new creators of shorts and series, setting up a new working studio, figuring out budgets. All of that type of work pays off in the end, but it requires discipline and patience when what you want to do is go, go, go! My advice…take the time and work hard on your preparation.
PROGRAMMING & PRODUCTION
Since the dawn of mass produced entertainment, there has been a tug-o-war between the worlds of Programming and Production. Producers are focused on making the show/film/record, caring for the creator, figuring out the logistics of getting things done. By contrast the programmers are obsessed with the audience: how to find it and how to keep it. Professionals on both sides argue which is more important. The truth is that both are absolutely critical to success. (And, it’s a shame that they’re so often confused with each other.)
We premised our channel on the radical notion that the cartoons themselves are only part of the puzzle. Developing and executing the programming of the channel (exactly when to release what, how to properly promote our new cartoons, what the channel should look like, and how all this was different from/or the same as television) was crucial to our success and your enjoyment.
POSITIONING
Initially we thought we’d be primarily an adult cartoon venue, given the ridiculous limitations that American legislation has placed on how the internet deals with children’s programming. But, two things happened on the way to that party. Many of you didn’t fall in love with our series SuperF*ckers. This was disappointing. The Frederator team really believes in creator James Kochalka, and thought that his comic series was beautiful and hilarious. This brings up the obvious but often overlooked dictum: Not Everything Works.
Meanwhile, Bravest Warriors really took off with a pretty broad audience. A lot of young adults liked it, for sure, but (and we should have anticipated this, back in that preparation stage…duh) a bunch of young folk came on board too. Kids who heard that Adventure Time creator Pen Ward had come up with another show with his inimitable voice and were eager to get a look.
So we had to adjust our positioning and our programming to match the reality of who our audience really was and is and what you want. Which brings us to our other P’s…
PRESENTATION & PROMOTION
The look and ‘voice’ of the channel evolved pretty rapidly. Given our early “adult” persona we started out as Too Weird/Stupid/Sexy/Funny/Brave for TV. But none of those fit, and we soon became Funny Cartoons! Everywhere! That’ll probably go through some transformation too. Too Cool! Cartoons —our latest short cartoons big idea incubator— is the place we try out new films and filmmakers to discover our next series and features. It’s where you have your biggest influence. After all, we start each short with the confidence that it’ll be the next Mickey Mouse. It’s only after we’re done that something breaks out like Bee & PuppyCat.
The logo that Jeaux Janovsky designed has been the same all the way through (with some variations) but it took several months for our promotion strategy to take shape. The realities of Internet advertising allow us to test ads and locations for a penny a pop. When we find an ad and outlet that seems to be working for us, we increase the pennies incrementally to find the right level for each outlet.** We also try to make good use of our Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, Medium and other social media connections.***
PERSONALIZATION
Probably the biggest thing that separates online video from its more traditional cousins (network and cable) is the ability –the necessity– of communicating with and taking a personal interest in your audience. And serving them directly. NBC does not personalize its messages or programming at all. It just puts up shows and hopes for mass appeal. Cable networks get a little more personal in that they may know their viewers are women, or rock fans, or politically left or right wing. But after their first decade most cable channels stopped even trying to be in direct contact with their viewers.
Online, we have direct and deep relationships with you, our subscribers and viewers, because after all, YouTube is probably the biggest social network of all. ‘Subscribers’ on YouTube is an odd term, since it does not denote any monetary relationship, as it does with, say, magazines, or HBO. Still, the fact of a viewer “subscribing” to our channel means that they have decided they like us enough to want to stay and be an ongoing part of the club. It is absolutely key to our success that we keep doing things that will make everyone feel welcome.
To that end we provide special non-programming content, like Behind The Scenes, hosts, special interviews, sneak peeks, and real back-and-forth communication with the people who have favored us with their contact information. The constantly shifting sands of what you, the audience, likes and doesn’t like is where we expend most of our energy.
I said it before and I’ll say it forever: The most important part of any TV channel on any medium is probably the ninth P…People. You. Without you, we’re nothing.
Frederator Loves You! Cartoon Hangover does too.
…..
* Cartoon Hangover, Cartoon Hangover 2, Cartoon Hangover ESP, Bravest Warriors, SuperFckers, Hangover Uncensored
** 5 million views from paid media, generating 365,000 subscribers & 9 million additional follow on views.
* 117,000 likes on Facebook, 15,000 followers on Twitter, 12,000 followers on Instagram.
Special thanks to Bill Burnett for his help with this essay, and to the Frederator Networks staff, Zoe Barton, Jennifer Sterling Bragg, Yoel Flohr, Nicky Fung, Matt Gielen, Cade Hiser, Eric Homan, Kevin Kolde, Christy Mirabel, Carrie Miller, Nate Olson, Fred Pustay, Chris Troise, Chris Wendelken, David Wilk, Ari Zapata.
