An independent creative agency in LA.
Everyone loves watching YouTube. But no one loves ads on YouTube (not even us).
There’s never a great way to tell people they should pay for something they’ve always had for free. But showing them we get exactly how they feel? That’s a whole other story.
With competition among streaming services on the rise, YouTube Premium needed a direct response campaign to break through the noisy market and resonate with core YouTube users. As a departure from their previous work that leveraged straightforward features and price points, we were challenged to grow awareness and subscriptions by delivering that same information in a way that felt more relatable, engaging, and well, “YouTube-y”.
Recognizing YouTube's vast audience of heavy users, we developed All YouTube. No Interruptions. a comedy-driven campaign that leveraged just about every genre of video you'd ever find on YouTube, from nature clips to cooking tutorials. The concept was simple and contextual: depict what feels like a real YouTube video you love to watch, only make the characters self-aware enough to anticipate the inevitable commercial interruption. But in a delightful turn of events, our voiceover pops in to let the characters know that this is YouTube Premium. There are no ads. Or interruptions of any kind, for that matter.
Leaning into up & coming content creators such as Marc Rebillet, DangMattSmith & Lynn Davis of “Cooking with Lynja” as well as people’s love for animals, nostalgia and more, our spots capture a glimpse of all the YouTube content our audience is passionate about, while communicating the benefits of Premium in a charming, self-referential way.
Knowing just how big music videos are on YouTube, we took our campaign to the next level, creating a spot featuring viral sensation and mega-talented rapper, Saweetie, leveraging the real music video for her newest single, “Closer”.
We took a mixed media approach to produce this campaign including live action, animation, found footage and animal linguistics specialists to create 12 unique spots that appeal to various YouTube audiences.
Although we can’t share specific results, the spots have been performing well and we’re working on the next two iterations of this campaign for 2022. And yes, we are fully aware we made YouTube ads to tell people they can stop seeing ads on YouTube. The irony is not lost on us ;)
