Putting the You back in YouTube
Challenge
How do you create a unifying vision for a sprawling brand by doubling down on its greatest asset (i.e. its passionate fan and creator ecosystem)?
Context
Purpose: Help YOU shape the content and culture that matters to the world today
YouTube was growing exponentially, but growth was pulling them into different directions. Some were pushing for YouTube to be more like TV, with high-quality programming and production values.
Others wanted to double down on its unique ecosystem of fans and creators — but advertisers did not see the value.
We needed to develop a unifying vision for the world’s largest library of random awesomeness that gave focus and direction.
A look at the emerging media landscape and deep immersion in the world of creators and fans and their relationship to YouTube revealed the answer: YouTube is much more than just another ‘tube’, or another media channel. Its power has always been in the "You". YouTube is propelled by the passion of its creators and fans — a cohort we called Generation C: curatorial, community-oriented, and creative.
This allowed us to create a blueprint for how to deploy YouTube’s creator and fan community to accelerate audience growth and increase advertising revenue.
Action
A brand platform built on You
We designed YouTube’s global creative platform around “You” – "You" the Creators and "You" the fans. We made the creators the face of YouTube. The platform showed the power of YouTube both as a global media platform and as a global community.
Tone of voice: We developed a set of engaging guidelines that helped YouTube and its creators communicate more authentically with its fans and each other.
Creative campaigns: We developed a multi-media, multi-category, global creative platform that gave YouTube's top creators their own campaigns.
Sub-brand architectures and launch campaigns: We built YouTube's brand architecture and aligned internal teams around the new vision by translating the Quest across verticals.