Casey Neistat, the filmmaker and YouTube vlogger who sold his social video company Beme to CNN last November for a reported $25 million, gave a sneak peek today at how he is relaunching Beme as a media brand for CNN.
For the New York-based Neistat, whose popular YouTube channel (with its 7 million subscribers) was not part of the CNN deal, his biggest challenge will be maintaining an irreverent, iconoclastic style in the bosom of a mainstream media behemoth.
It helps that Beme is staying away from the suits at CNN uptown with its office and studio in Chinatown, Neistat explained on the video. He’s also been using the influx of CNN cash to go on a hiring spree, with his expanding team busy developing programming and the visual identity for the new Beme media brand.
The new company will target young viewers with shortform programming designed for the platforms where they hang out: YouTube, Snapchat, etc. “We’re going to be making a tremendous amount of media,” Neistat told Philip DeFranco in an episode of the latter’s podcast. “We’re going to start with a daily show and a weekly investigative reporting show, and then we want to get into sports and all kinds of societal issues and music and fashion and art, and on the tech side we’re building technology that enables that media. What we’re doing is so much more broad than news.”
VIDEO JUST WENT LIVE! Welcome to a conversation with @CaseyNeistat… https://t.co/9C6YTQJk8R
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In a brief history Neistat said Beme was a “good app, but Snapchat was better and then Instagram was better – so why in the summer of 2016 did CNN buy a failed company? The value behind the app – and they liked me too.” In essence, CNN acquired the Beme team and Neistat’s social media savvy and ideas. He expects to launch the Beme YouTube channel within “weeks.”
At a time when CNN has become a political hot potato, Neistat says Beme will not be politically motivated – politics will play a tiny piece as they’re already “fighting against CNN baggage.”
Plans include “starting on YouTube, Beme news four days a week at first hosted by me and regular journalists and our head of production Jake (Roper). It will be about things that interest us. We’re making it now. We’ll see what sucks, correct it and make it very good – good enough at launch – then very good and then make it great together.”
After a quick look at branding elements like fonts and logo applications for the new Beme, he screens a pilot segment and explains it will be more of an experience than just news reporting.
The sample Beme story highlights the business of buying and creating fake social media likes. It notes click farms and a raid in Thailand where hundreds of cell phones are rotated amongst hundreds of thousands of sim cards to make it look like users are actually using a product.
Cut to a vending machine in Russia where people can buy Instagram likes like candy. Then a Beme producer buys 5,000 likes for a staffer for $39.99 and shows the results as he sees likes on an Instagram post skyrocket past 3,000. OK, so it’s a little rough, and recalls Vice, Vox, BuzzFeed and other millennial-skewing media brands.
As for future plans, Neistat promises “an investigative reporting show weekly where we’ll dig deep into one issue. After that sports, music/fashion focused – more cultural – that’s the scope of the ambition on the media side.
“Don’t be skeptical. Just check it out at launch. If you think it’s shit call us out and tell us why it’s shit. If you think it’s really shit, then never watch it again. But if you like it – let us know.”
Not the least bit shy of controversy, Neistat was featured in his own video (“The First Day of Summer”) and a companion video (“How to Pick Up Girls With Casey Neistat”, with fellow vlogger Jesse Wellens) while in France for the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. It was sponsored by Samsung (a regular sponsor) as they lived out a teenage fantasy which caused a social media backlash (and concern for what his wife Candice might think).
Unfazed, Neistat explained in a follow-up video that it was all fake, as explained in the video’s premise, and that Candice was OK with it.
He also showed more of the unseen footage to give context for the video, in typical bare-your-soul Neistat fashion.
Time will soon tell if Neistat can spin a Beme news brand into experiential magic for CNN with a side of news to go.
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