Is VidCon The Next SXSW?
It may be even more important. Here’s why.
By Ian Schafer, Chairman and Founder of Deep Focus
(photo credit: Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
A few weeks ago, I found my 6-year-old daughter recording a video on her iPad. She ended it by saying, “Thanks you guys! Don’t forget to subscribe to my channel!”
Oy.
It’s a different world for kids (and even many adults) of all ages, right now, and if that wasn’t apparent by my daughter’s penchant for performing on her own camera, it was on full display at VidCon 2015.
Now in its 6th year, VidCon is “a convention, and a conference, and a celebration, and a discussion” about the evolution of online video. Started in 2010 by the “VlogBrothers” Hank and John Green (author of The Fault In Our Stars and Paper Towns), VidCon has primarily been a place where video creators and their fans (who are also creators) can get together to both fawn and learn tricks of the trade. In that first year, it attracted over 1,400.
This year’s event attracted over 30,000 people by most accounts — and has probably never been more important.
The definition of celebrity has changed.
Fame is no longer about what traditional mainstream media says it is. It’s what the audience says it is. This is a fundamental, democratic shift in what it means to be a celebrity, and what it means to have influence.
The number of YouTube stars with views and subscribers in the millions continues to grow. According to YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki’s VidCon keynote, there are now 35 channels with more than 10 million subscribers, and the number of channels that are making six figures a year jumped 50% year-on-year. This is audience that most shows on cable networks would love to have. Heck, it’s an audience that shows on broadcast networks would love to have. In fact, according to Deep Focus’ Cassandra Report, if forced to choose, 14- to 18-year-olds would pick YouTube (60%) over TV (40%). If you were to show a photo of PewDiePie (38 million subscribers) to an average American kid, they’d probably know exactly who it is.
But it doesn’t just stop at the kids. According to a recent study by by University of Southern California marketing professor Jeetendr Sehdev, Adults in the U.S. consider YouTube stars to be up to five times more influential and believable than traditional celebrities.
This is corroborated by our Cassandra Report findings that In contrast to YouTube stars, 45% of millennials say they aren’t interested in celebrity culture, and only 30% feel they can relate to celebrities today, and that 45% would like to see more realism and everyday issues in the entertainment landscape.
It may seem that the star of aspirational celebrity is waning, but it’s just changing. BuzzFeed’s Ze Frank noted this in his VidCon interview with Katie Couric:
“It became obvious that…people use media to express who they are. We now have a modern opportunity to let people recognize a version of themselves in media that had been left out.”
Mainstream celebrities even wanted in on the action, especially social media savvy celebrities like Mark Ruffalo.
This is for sure: Adults are shifting their taste in celebrities, and kids believe that they can be influential, too.
Creators‘ audiences are creators, too.
The top creators’ most passionate audiences are likely some kind of creators themselves. They may be just posting content or comments, but many are also are building audiences themselves for reasons ranging from the sake of their personal brand, or the promise of fame/fortune. Everywhere you looked at VidCon, there were kids emerging from sessions sitting in hallways posting content to YouTube, Periscope, Snapchat, and Instagram with equipment ranging from selfie sticks to professional video cameras with boom mics.
This is where VidCon differs from SXSW the most. At SXSW, the core “creators” have always been developers. They are scarce; individuals or teams with specific talents and skill sets. Attendees have routinely gone to SXSW to find what might be the “next big thing”. At VidCon, the “next big thing” is already there; the creators are audiences themselves. In fact, we are all creators, capable of a making a video, tweet, post, or photo that goes viral. That opportunity makes VidCon way more accessible, and success in this format that much more attainable, without having to learn to code, start a company, and/or get funding. The “next big things” are defined by popularity of actual consumers, not by the media or venture capitalists. Startups at SXSW have to hire bands to get people to come to their parties to get people to write about them, to have people learn about them. Creators at VidCon just have to show up with their phones, and apply what they learn right away — and get instant gratification in the form of likes, views, and comments. And the brands are coming to them.
Kids will be kids until they don’t act that way.
As a father of two daughters, the emergence of video platforms that deliver instant gratification is bringing “growth hacking” mainstream. As live broadcasting platforms like YouNow and Periscope emerge, I worry that teens, especially girls, may resort to audience-building tactics that they may regret. It will be important for us, as parents, to instill values in our children that will teach them the responsibility necessary to handle the technology they now have at their (often unsupervised) fingertips.
One of the most uplifting dimensions of VidCon was when creators were meeting each other in real life (IRL) for the first time. Our Cassandra Report calls those “e-lationships, and 76% of Millennials say they have real friends on social media that they’ve never met. Witnessing these “meetups” was a joy. Like seeing kids reunite at a summer camp reunion.
Popular culture is now the media between people.
For centuries, “popular culture” was media at people that brands advertised within to reach people (eg. TV, movies, magazines, newspapers). But now, thanks to the emergence and dominance of mobile and social media platforms, popular culture is the media that exists between people, and it’s never been more temporal. It changes constantly, and it would seem that few are better at shaping it than the creators at VidCon. Online video stars have built huge audiences by creating content that replicates celebrity makeup looks, spoofs mainstream media, brings video games to life, or reimagines popular songs. There’s a lot to learn from these creators’ adaptability to — and remixing of — their surroundings.
Some brands totally get it. The rest will, eventually.
The ones that have the most to gain from understanding the world of creators are the ones that directly or indirectly pay them — brands. There were a few brands already at VidCon that “got it”.
Kia’s “Parents Lounge” was a great place for parents who took their kids to the event to relax and explore what Kia has to offer. It was a thoughtful activation.
Of course, in a sign of the times, media properties tried to gain relevance by hosting conference tracks. Time, Inc’s People and Entertainment Weekly hosted tracks that interviewed creators. While NBC featured several of their own talent, and Universal Pictures promoted its upcoming film Jem and The Holograms, a property re-imagined for the “creator age” by having Jem rise to fame through her YouTube channel.
And Canon tried to get its camera products in front of creators and gave away swag.
Many brand marketers were also having their first VidCon experience, meeting some of the top creators, and of course, some of the top networks and representatives of those creators. While I’m not sure how many (or if any) deals were actually struck at this event, I’m beginning to think it’s a way better format than the “Newfronts”, in that there is no artificial scarcity. The theme of VidCon is all about collaboration with creatives and creators, and in the future, this will be a significant strategy as brands will need to find new ways to stay relevant to audiences that are ad-avoidant by nature.
Agencies, disrupted?
Agencies, by definition make things. They are creators themselves, but do so on-demand for their clients. There aren’t many incentives to move production out-of-house, or co-create with external talent. But this will need to change. Collaboration will be a quality that marketers increasingly look for in a partner but business models will have to evolve to make it a viable option for most agencies.
But as agencies either preserve the problems that they are the solution for (see the “Shirky Principle”), or take their time in solving them, they are being disrupted on a daily basis.
Just as media agencies and holding companies tour their clients around the CES tour, YouTube walked brands through the halls, introducing them directly to ad vehicles (Creators). Modern publishers have learned the art of distribution and companies like BuzzFeed and multi-channel YouTube networks like Collective Digital Studios had a significant presence at the event, meeting brands directly — with or without their agencies present.
Just as Creators adapt to their own surroundings, creative and media agencies will need to adapt to this new reality. If, or how they do it is the biggest question. If they don’t, they will be relegated to the worst possible positioning: middlemen.
While VidCon isn’t necessarily SXSW (yet, and that may be a good thing), it should be something that is definitely on your radar if you’re a Creator, marketer, or agency. Seeing all of it firsthand enhances your perspective of what is actually happening in culture, and makes you more acutely aware of how to adapt to consumers (who are discovering content way faster than you are).
It’s often said that “if you’re not paying for the product, you are the product”. At VidCon, people are not just the product, they’re the media (and are getting paid) — and they love it.
I’ll be back. And you should go. Unlike SXSW Interactive, where brands can easily ruin things by feeling like they need to compete with technology and investors for attention, brands are the main source of revenue for Creators. It’s a natural fit, and with lessons learned from the bad contracts of the music business, a fit where brands get to be the ones exploited for once.
