After Party Studios looks to embrace traditional media
London-based After Party Studios is looking to harness its experience in viral social and branded content to grow its reach in the traditional media space.
League of ’72 attracted one million likes in its first week on TikTok
They say timing is everything and for the UK’s After Party Studios that could certainly prove to be the case. Founded in 2016 by YouTube creator Callux (Callum McGinley), the company offers creative insights and strategy, production and distribution for brands, content creators and legacy mainstream media companies.
As the older broadcasters scramble around wondering where their audience and advertisers went and begin to chase after them, a one-stop solutions shop that bridges the two worlds could make a killing.
MD Joshua Barnett says: “We have that start-up mentality, but we’ve started to establish ourselves over the last couple of years within the wider traditional media landscape outside of just digital. We’ve grown up and matured a bit this year.”
Alongside the branded content and ads, work in the world where “traditional meets YouTube” is moving fast. The company is a frequent collaborator with Sky Sports on projects such as Scenes and League of ’72. The latter includes a fledgling TikTok channel that attracted one million likes in its first week, in addition to the existing YouTube, YouTube Shorts, Instagram and X channel content.
Also in the works is a new project for Channel 4.0 called Hear Me Out, following the success of last year’s doc The Cost of Being a YouTuber.
Joshua Barnett
Barnett, who previously worked at broadcasters such as ITV, adds: “We’ve always been quite keen to really sit in the in the crosshairs of where YouTube meets mainstream and pull those worlds together. Frustratingly, it’s taken ages and traditional [broadcasting] should have been taking more from the digital side for a lot longer than it has now.
“There was more talk about digital than ever before at the Edinburgh TV Festival this year, so hopefully TV can embrace working with companies like ours, get in the right mindset and build a bright future for both sides. It’s not about digital knocking out traditional, it’s about sparking change and bringing worlds closer together to thrive because there are so many people out of work right now on the TV side that have amazing transitional skills for our side.”
Company co-founder and director Ben Doyle also had a more traditional background, at creative agencies like BBH and its in-house Black Sheep Studio. A lot of his advice for traditional players looking to crack YouTube is around thinking about titles and thumbnails, shareability on WhatsApp, not topping your programme with the same opening sequence as you would on a linear channel and producing consistently and in volume so the algorithm likes you.
Most of all, though, he wants to banish the idea in the traditional space that “social is a dirty word.”
“We want to bring the best bits of digital into the TV world because we think there is a lot that can make it more agile and make the money go further,” Doyle says. “We were speaking to a TV production company recently that got paid £200,000 [US$262,000] to produce a gameshow pilot. I couldn’t believe that. For that money we could do a whole series on YouTube that will get more viewers than a pilot which won’t go anywhere.
Ben Doyle
“These people are slowly realising you can access audiences quicker, in a more agile way and keep improving and testing as you go by reading the YouTube comments or looking at the viewer retention graph.
“Floor Is Lava came out on Netflix two years after Floor is Lava was a trend on TikTok. That audience had grown up – they were 14 at the time, now they’re all 16 and too cool for you. That ability to move quicker to produce things that are timely and relevant to catch audiences is the key here. It’s our job to make brands and commissioners see you can move fast in a safe way, that still ticks all the boxes around compliance and legal.”
After Party’s three-year plan, according to Barnett, is about building out established relationships with players like Sky, Channel 4 and Netflix, and pushing further into the TV commissioning world. But also tapping into the exploding trend for branded content, which looks like it’s going to be a crucial pawn in traditional media’s fight back against rapidly declining revenues and budgets.
“Brands are going to need to build up brand affinity, brand fame and really strike a chord with an audience over and above just the ads that we’ve been forced to watch for too many years now,” Barnett says.
“The recent Billie Eilish piece with American Express was engaging content that didn’t feel like advertising. That’s where the world is moving.”
