YouTube is redefining celebrity
‘Most powerful marketing platform’ for millennials, talent manager says
It’s a meet-and-greet worthy of an A-list star.
Outside the three-storey bookstore at the outdoor shopping mecca known as The Grove, hundreds of mostly young women have formed a line that stretches past trendy clothing stores and spills out onto a nearby street. They’re waiting to have Connor Franta, an affable 22-year-old Internet personality best known for delivering diarylike monologues on YouTube, sign a copy of his new memoir.
The irony of a YouTube star drawing a massive crowd at a bookstore isn’t lost on talent manager Andrew Graham.
“A year ago, I went to New York and tried to get a book publisher to take a meeting with me,” said Graham, who represents Franta and other mega-popular YouTubers. “I had one meeting, and they laughed at me. Here we are a year later at Barnes & Noble in Los Angeles with a New York Times bestselling author who is a client.”
In its 10-years of existence, YouTube has evolved from a playground for kitty videos to a $20-billion-US visual menagerie. Along the way, it’s also become an incubator for a new type of celebrity — a digital Brat Pack that’s leveraging smartphone stardom to write books, drop albums, design products and break into Hollywood.
“It’s the most powerful marketing platform in the world for millennials,” said Graham. “If you’re trying to reach that audience of girls gathered downstairs, YouTube is the venue to do that.”
In recent years, YouTube has propped up YouTubers like Franta — “creators,” the site calls them — who attract millions of subscribers who regularly watch their online videos and ads attached to them.
With his playful grin and doe eyes, Franta currently boasts more than 4.4 million devotees to his personal YouTube channel, where he speaks to viewers about life, dating, candy, whatever at least once a week. He began posting videos in 2010 while still attending high school in La Crescent, Minnesota. Now, he’s releasing music compilations and a line of locally grown coffee.
For every Justin Bieber or Psy, perhaps YouTube’s biggest success stories, there are dozens of Frantas. It’s a form of celebrity that didn’t exist 10 years ago, when YouTube made it simple to post video online.
The creators’ importance to YouTube is evidenced by the Google-backed site bankrolling marketing campaigns the past two years featuring such famous (on the Internet) faces as Bethany Mota, Hannah Hart and Grace Helbig. They share a similar esthetic: improvised delivery, quirky editing and personalities that jump off screens.
Google has opened production facilities in London, Los Angeles, New York, Tokyo and Sao Paulo for creators who have more than 5,000 subscribers to film videos. The studios are equipped with sets and equipment that transcend most YouTubers’ living rooms and webcams. The spaces also serve as social hubs for creators.
“For us, creators are the light bulb of the ecosystem,” said Kevin Allocca, YouTube’s head of culture and trends.
The next evolution for online video has arrived, with such sites and apps as Twitch, Periscope, Meerkat and YouNow making it easier than ever to stream live video. That’s a feature YouTube has in its arsenal.
“There’s a ton of opportunity for innovation there,” said Allocca.