The Exchanges

Q Okay. Now you, you're involved in it. You created it though, correct?

A No, no, no. I would give, uh, Pete and Lloyd were the ones who really created it. I was more on the production side of it, so I helped to, I shot the very first one, and then helped to build the channel for it, and then helped to build the audience for it, and then helped to build a production infrastructure for it, and so on and so forth, and so now it's, it's kind of its own machine and its own beast, but, uh, Pete and Lloyd created it really in a comedy shop, uh, in LA, West Side LA, and then I think that they also were touring around doing improv, uh, And it was just a format that they had always done. And as they started to get into, uh, YouTube and be kind of introduced to what this whole world was, that was the idea was like, well, here's a thing that we've done in the past. Why don't we try this as a, uh, as a show for what time was just, uh, nice Peter's YouTube channel. Nice Peter is a musician, comedy musician. And, uh, it started there as a format and then kind of branched out and became really kind of its own thing. Then gained its own channel, gained its own social following, gained its own, Social team.

AI assessment note: “No, no, no. Pete and Lloyd were the ones who really created it.”

Q And do you have To pay him to get that there, or is that you just pulling some, pulling some, what do you pay someone like that to distribute a video?

A So, with Julian at the time, it was much lower. I think it was, you know, oh god, sub 20,000. But like now, uh, for most of these things, it is, 7500 thousand minimum, if you're looking to distribute a content on an influencers channel. And the thing that is, is really important to remember, maybe going even back to the first point is like, it is a very intimate relationship on that channel with that audience. So it has to be queued up in the right way. And it has to be the right kind of content for that influencer to be able to put on his channel. Julian, it worked because he said, Hey, listen guys, I'm a director. You guys know that I love directing. I love making more content. Here's something that Purina let me direct. It was amazing. I want you guys to get a first look at it. You may see some of these things running other places, and his audience loved it, and they carried it, and they made, they made it that much more successful, but I've seen, and this is, it's like, it happens probably 50% of the time, is like, brands don't understand the mechanism. They just think, okay, I'm buying this media, and so now this spot runs there. I don't want it, you know, an intro or an outro or anything like that. I don't want this thing to have any sort of context. I just want your audience, That I'm paying for to see this thing that I then paid to make, and if you run a commercial on o…

AI assessment note: “with Julian at the time, it was much lower. I think it was, you know, oh god, sub 20,000.”

Q I imagine when you're producing, you got to think about distribution as well. You mentioned doing this for free with very little ad spend. If we've got a listener right now, they've got, they have maybe a big list. So they have their own little way to seed a video. Uh, what's the easiest way to really max out views and how should they be thinking about formats on YouTube?

A We have to think, uh, Kind of almost like first and foremost, first and foremost, uh, about consistency, right? Like that is kind of the name of the game with really anything, any format, anything that's going to do well online. Most of these people, um, that are, you know, finding any sort of success, they, they're finding in a very, very formulaic way, but it's ground in something that they're doing repeatedly, and they're doing it with, you know, a level of perfect, like trying to perfect that, that consistency at all times, right? So like the analogy that, uh, I use a lot is it's like meeting someone for lunch, right? Like you, if you scheduled something once a week or, you know, it's maybe a meeting that you have with someone or whatever, however, whatever caption you want to give it, you have lunch with that person every Friday. They're your friend. You end up kind of developing this amazing relationship with them. You stay in touch with what's going on in their life. You hear something about them at a different time in the week. You care about them because you have that standing lunch date, you know, you're gonna be able to talk to them about it, so on and so forth. If they don't show up for that lunch date that week, and they don't tell you that they're not going to show up for that lunch date that week, You're pissed, right? You don't, you don't trust them maybe as muc…

AI assessment note: “We have to think... first and foremost... about consistency”

Q So what was, what was, would you say, I know there's never a silver bullet, but the top production secret, when somebody is looking to create these short form videos on YouTube, they're doing it consistently. What's the key thing they have to do from a production perspective?

A You know, from a production perspective, I think you just have to be mindful of, I mean, the, it's like the, uh, what's the saying is like, you can never judge a book by its cover. It's like you have, with the internet, a group of people that are ready to judge the book by its cover, you know, so you have to, you have to give them something within the first 10 to 15 seconds that, uh, Let's them know a little bit of what they're in for and hooks them in. You don't have the opportunity, especially with like Facebook video and these other platforms that are scroll based, you know, there's a feed where you're just scrolling through.

AI assessment note: “you have to give them something within the first 10 to 15 seconds”

Q And so when you first launched even ERP or even again, the new stuff that you're doing, when you launch video number one, What's the thing that you're doing to create momentum around that? And then obviously the momentum turns into consistency over time. But on that first video, what are you doing?

A You are looking at every aspect of what's going to be viewed, right? So, like, you have to start, um, I mean, obviously, content is king within the situation, so you want the content to be amazing, and so you have to understand, okay, we want to give them something, we want to leave them maybe wanting more, you want to make sure the content is well-paced, you want to make sure that it has something in the first couple seconds that maybe gives some sort of exposition for what it is that people are about to watch, so that they know why it is that they're going to dedicate some of their, their day's routine to this. But then everything outside of that has its own lens, right? So like the thumbnail, you want to make sure that you, that is something that is visible that will pop while it's in a feed, while it's somebody scrolling past this thing, or while it's been sent in an email that is amongst a bunch of other emails that you're going to be, have something that's going to stand out that people can clearly identify what it is. And that when they then maybe make that second step to then look at what the text of the That link is that that then describes the thing that's in that thumbnail, right?

AI assessment note: “You are looking at every aspect of what's going to be viewed”

Q I'm cool. I've got this on. I'm recording. I'm recording. I got that audio. So, so when you guys are thinking about even like things like thumbnails and metadata descriptions in the YouTube videos for Josh, what, what kind, I mean, are you, are you doing any research there? Are you just putting like the comedian names, the plot, et cetera?

A Yeah, you definitely, I mean, you want to, it depends on the platform. I mean, it's kind of the most boring answer, but you want to make sure that, like, the metadata is in line with whatever is pushing that algorithm, right? So, like, on YouTube, obviously, yeah, it's a search-driven platform, so, like, you want things that will pop up in search, but then at the same time, you want to maybe weigh other pieces of your content that Uh, might drive search more. So like an example, it's like YouTube actually favors, they favor watch time, right? They want more people to be on that platform for longer. They don't want people to just come there, be sent a video that's two minutes long and then leave. They want you to be there. They want you to get invested in it so much so that you're subscribing to channels so that you understand how to comment so that you see value in coming back. And so that you see value also in creating a longer session because so that they can serve you a bunch more ads. So for us, I mean, this is just more anecdotal than anything. We have, um, uh, my two founders in the company, Daniel Kelson and Doug DeLuca. Daniel, um, produced David Letterman for eight years, uh, created Crank Yanker's The Man Show and Andy Milonakis' show and Jimmy Kimmel Live. He has one of the best talk show backgrounds in the entire world and knows kind of everybody in comedy. So for u…

AI assessment note: “you want things that will pop up in search, but then at the same time”

Q So what are your top three? Let's say your top three revenue streams in January, 2016. I imagine AdWords is probably one of them or Google.

A Yeah. Um, biggest ones for us right now are branded content. We do a lot of work with brands. Most brands coming into the space are beyond clueless. And so they have, you know, they have a need on kind of all fronts and we're able to satisfy and help them in a lot of different ways. So we work with them On everything. It's the funniest way. Like, it's the funniest, you know, thing to watch because it happens kind of over and over is that people will come to us for creative because we have all these amazing comedians and we can deliver comedy and we know how to do it in short form. So we can, we can knock that out of the part, you know, nine, if not 10 times out of 10. But then there's always this question afterwards where they're kind of like, they're like, well, what do we do with it now?

AI assessment note: “biggest ones for us right now are branded content.”

Q Is that the big, I was going to ask you, many people look at this, go, oh, they're creating great YouTube videos, they're getting a bunch of views, but are they making any money? How do you guys make money?

A We make money, uh, in a lot of different ways. So that's kind of the thing that you'll, I think if anybody, if you talk to anybody in digital that has been around for more than two years and you ask them about like what their, their revenue stream or digital video that is, and you ask them about their revenue streams, they're going to list like 10 things because it's the wild, wild west. I mean, it really is. And I think that, you know, there was this moment, there was a boom that happened about, um, you know, I think, what is it now? Like Six years ago or seven years ago, the MCN boom, where it's like, suddenly everybody really cared about the word and wanted to know what it meant and tried to figure out, you know, what is Maker Studios doing? What is Machinima doing? What is Fullscreen doing? All these different companies. And the truth was, you know, especially at the time, it's like, they didn't really even know that they were, you know, trying, they, they, they found some, some ability to make some money and do that on a consistent And that was largely just Avon because YouTube started the partner program where they were starting to monetize.

AI assessment note: “We make money, uh, in a lot of different ways.”