Company: COPA90
Role: Head of Audience Development
Brief / Mission: Create a content strand using our own talent to drive channel subscribers & views
Duration: 3 months
COPA90 had just launched their most successful content series in KSI Road to Wembley which was brilliant, just one problem, it cost a fortune in relative terms to the channel. It was up to us as a team to figure out how do we create content strands that deliver the same results as KSI but not make the channel rely on established talent.
COPA90 had just launched their most successful content series in KSI Road to Wembley which was brilliant, just one problem, it cost a fortune in relative terms to the channel. It was up to us as a team to figure out how do we create content strands that deliver the same results as KSI but not make the channel rely on established talent.
After many creative sessions the idea was to create a character once again sitting within the gaming genre, it would centre around a personality who would challenge the big Fifa YouTube stars to games of Fifa. We decided to call the character the fifa playa, and his personality would be to annoy the players thus enraging their individual fan bases and driving huge amounts of interaction.
Myself and the team researched and selected a large base of Fifa YouTubers who the Fifa Playa would play during his ‘first season’, building up to the final match-up against, yeah you guessed it, KSI. My main role in the making of Fifa Playa was his social strategy and how we make people give a shit about him. Giving him his own YouTube, Twitter and Facebook channels and beginning to find a voice for him, working with Spencer Owen who would play the character to get the sound of voice correct.
I created a 12 week content plan and conversation calendar which still to this date is probably the one thing in my career which I am most proud of. Behind the scenes each creator received an individual conversation calendar with their interactions with the Fifa Playa. Following a similar pattern for each match, their would be an argument on twitter across a few days before the challenge from the fifa playa in public. I refer to it like a boxing weigh-in, where the fans get to witness some drama ahead of the big fight, driving awareness of the upcoming battle. Creators were contractually obliged to take part in this and all interactions and planning devised by me.
The content strand was huge, and over the weeks the campaign rolled on it literally took my breath away. The 26 main videos in the series on COPA90 YouTube channel landed over 10 million views, 250,000 subscribers, 100,000s of comments and likes/dislikes, his own YouTube channel grew at a phenomenal rate. The content strand actually started a fandom in the #PlayaArmy and through the twitter arguments and interactions for the gaming creators his Twitter channel at one point was twice the size of COPA90s official Twitter page.
I’ll never forget the first episode going out and having 10x more dislikes than likes on the trailer, which normally you would think ahhhh we did something wrong, everyone hates him. I am not a psychologist but this is what I believed would happen and why the conversation plans were integral. As the content strand got to episode 2,3,4 the likes began to outweigh the dislikes, each creator has an adoring fan base regardless of what they make, sport, cooking, makeup, it doesn’t matter. Once their guy has played the fifa playa they then join him on his quest to play the other players, and they don’t like the other creators but are building affinity with the fifa playa as he grows.