Creative Review: YouTube
In this week’s, “Creative Review”, Coop talks about YouTube’s latest OOH ads that can be found everywhere in NYC.
I like the recent YouTube ads from a purely creative point of view. They hit all the right buttons. Clear visuals, simple message, aspirational (as they say). I do have a little bit of a backstory here though which taints my overall opinion. One of my first projects in NY was turning a YouTube star into a make up brand. The girl was Lauren Luke, a single mom from a pretty grim place in the North of England. We flew her to NY, made her into a brand and successfully sold her product in Sephora. We also made a Super Nintendo game with her and got her a column in a national newspaper. Not bad.
Lauren was clearly a very talented make up artist - still is. But she is not what you would call a classical beauty. One of the reasons we liked her was because she didn’t look or act like the overly made up people you see in make up stores. She was real. And that was what YouTube was all about. Anybody could make it. It was a TV platform for the people.
There are still stories like this. Everyday Joes found on YouTube and turned into stars. But the stories are fewer and all seem to feature the same sorts of people. Young, good looking, confident people. The sort of people that you suspect might make it anyway. If not on YouTube then somewhere else.
This is not a bad thing but I do miss the days when someone totally random and a little odd became a star on YouTube. I’d love to see some posters of them.
Everyone does.