Tyler and James McFadden are trying to launch careers at six seconds a pop.
That’s the maximum run time allowed by Vine, the popular video shooting and sharing app owned by San Francisco’s Twitter Inc.
Six seconds is just long enough for a comedy video and, as the McFadden brothers are out to prove, plenty of time to pitch a product.
In the last few months, the two have signed a murderers’ row of Vine talent to their downtown L.A. online video firm, Collab. The firm acts as a kind of talent agency, brokering deals between brands and online performers so they can make a living from their short videos.
Among the people Collab has scooped up are improv actors Curtis LePore, Brittany Furlan and K.C. James. The names might be unfamiliar to most, but with each carrying more than 2 million followers on Vine, they command a tremendous audience.
The McFaddens believe their current roster of 25 Vine creators is the next wave of online talent – prolific video makers who have millions of followers and, perhaps, as they say in advertising circles, “influence.”
Bringing together online video talent to take advantage of their combined audience is old hat in Los Angeles. It’s a business model tried by the well-funded companies of the YouTube world, such as Culver City’s Maker Studios, FullScreen and other so-called “multichannel networks.” But none of those has applied it on a scale this small and to a platform this new.
Vine, released this January, lets people shoot short videos through a smartphone and post it on their social media feeds. Other followers can then “like” a Vine, comment on it and share (or “re-Vine”) it. Last month, the company announced that its app has reached 40 million users.
As Furlan, James and other Vine creators crank out clips through the app, Collab executives said offers from brands are rolling in. Soon enough, they promise, so will the money.
“A lot of the creators that we’re working with are doing it full time. And if they’re not right now they will be within a matter of months,” James said. “They’re probably going to make six figures in the first year of being on Vine.”
It’s a bold prediction, especially given the profit troubles many YouTube networks have had. But in a way, Vine might actually beat YouTube as platform for promoting brands.
Much like retweeting in Twitter, the system of re-Vining is built for viral spread. YouTube, on the other hand, largely relies on other social networks to reach an audience.
It’s true that the videos on Vine are short, but when it comes to shilling goods, that could have its benefits. After all, a Vine consumer doesn’t know if a video she’s about to view is an outrageous joke or an ordinary ad.
“On YouTube it takes five seconds for you to get to the point where you can skip an ad,” Tyler McFadden said. “On Vine, if you watch six seconds and you didn’t like it, you can scroll to the next video. But no matter what, you’re watching the whole ad.”
Creative freedom
Tyler and James McFadden have been part of the YouTube space for some time. Their first outfit, a YouTube channel named GoPotatoTV, dates to 2006, practically the Pleistocene era of online video.
They took notice of Vine not long after the app launched; when the stars began to emerge, the brothers set about turning Collab into a manager of Vine talent. The advertisers soon followed.
Collab scored a deal this month to produce a campaign for Line, a communications app that’s more-or-less the Skype of Asia. The company will be attaching a few of its Vine stars to make the spot, including James, who has also done videos promoting Warner’s bras. Vine star Furlan has previously created videos for Benefit Cosmetics makeup.
So far, paid-for Vines feature the format’s irreverent and aggressive style and seem tangential to the products they are pitching.
Furlan’s spot for Benefit has the star flipping her hair back while the camera pans out to reveal her eyes, which are heavily made up in smoky eye shadow.
“This is Angel,” she coos. “He’s a model.” The camera pulls back further to reveal Angel, who’s recoiling from her advances.
The video loops infinitely, as with all Vines. And that’s the spot. Such commercials, by the way, run for free on Vine.
Furlan said the company gave her complete creative freedom; all she needed to include was the product name in the video’s title and a searchable keyword in the video’s description.
As other companies have begun dipping their toes into Vine campaigns, not all have been so hands-off.
“I’ve been approached by some and it hasn’t worked out because the companies are too picky and want creative control,” Furlan said. “I’ve literally turned down thousands of dollars in brand deals because of that. But in the end, it’s not even going to serve their purpose.”
The Collab creators declined to reveal their hauls for the Benefit campaign or their other deals. An article in AdAge reported that some spots with top talent can fetch up to $10,000 for a single video. Vine, which is completely hands-off with its video creators, doesn’t see a penny from the ad money; talent agencies typically get 10 percent of a performer’s pay.
Earlier this summer, International Coffee & Tea LLC, parent of the Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf chain, commissioned a small campaign on Vine to commemorate the company’s 50th anniversary. The marketing team hired filmmaker Jethro Ames to make several stop-motion animation Vines.
One of his creations was of a cup traveling through a rainforest, ending up at a coffee shop and in a person’s outstretched hand. The spot was simple, direct and more or less on message.
“It was well worth the effort and something we’d consider doing again,” said Patrice Anderson, director of e-commerce and online marketing at Coffee Bean. She declined to say how much Ames was paid, but did say the company will be featuring his work this fall inside its shops
“We would have loved to have 1 million re-Vines,” she said, “but the reality is we were looking for content we could utilize on an ongoing basis.”
YouTube too
Beyond branded campaigns, Vine talent has found revenue through a surprising source: YouTube.
A number of channels that compile Vines into a single video have popped up in the last few months. Some of these “Best of Vine” videos have racked up more than 10 million views.
Although Collab has not been behind most of these compilations, Tyler McFadden said the company has been in contact with YouTube about getting a cut of that ad revenue. (Interestingly, the Collab co-founders have never had a conversation with Vine execs.)
It’s a tricky process, given that some Vines in the YouTube video are by Collab clients, while others are not. The revenue negotiation with Google Inc., YouTube’s parent company, is ongoing.
There’s also the option of building on Vine’s success to boost other areas of a creator’s career – the platform as a steppingstone to bigger (and longer) things.
“Some of the creators have built big YouTube channels and are starting to make money through that,” James McFadden said. “We encourage our creators to make long-form content that’s over a minute.”
Making that switch isn’t easy, though. Vine rewards videos that are quick, pointed and feature a literal last-second twist – the one-liners of online comedy videos.
Furlan, who’s parlayed her Vine success into scoring representation by Century City talent agency ICM Partners, said she’s dabbled in longer Web videos. But it isn’t the same thing.
“Switching to YouTube has been difficult,” she said. “I’ve been living in the six-second world, but my agent told me, ‘You need to make longer videos,’ so I’m trying that.”
Collab’s bet that making Vines can be a full-time job for top talent has mixed results at the moment. James said that in the last month or so he’s been able to live entirely off Vine-related income. Furlan, for all her millions of followers, said she still relies on her family for money. (James McFadden assured her that’s soon to change.)
And what if another video format, with a new crop of stars comes along? Over the summer, photo app Instagram unveiled its own take on the short-form sharable video. There were some initial fears that Instagram, which is owed by Facebook Inc., would take over videos the way it has pictures. So far, Vine’s growth appears to be unaffected.
Tyler McFadden remains unfazed. Instagram Video, at a Terrence Malick-like 15 seconds a clip, is a whole different ball game.
“Some of our Vine creators were playing around with Instagram and found themselves with a little bit of extra time,” Tyler McFadden said. “They got their video in at six seconds, and were like, ‘What do I do with these nine extra seconds?’ ”
