EDITOR’S NOTE: This story was changed from the print version to correct the name of Young Hollywood’s founder, RJ Williams.
The people at Young Hollywood are heading to Rio de Janeiro and they’re taking their star-hungry video cameras with them.
The Westwood company this month announced plans to launch a video channel with a focus on athletes and celebrities attending World Cup 2014 in Brazil.
Until now, Young Hollywood has made behind-the-scenes celebrity videos in Los Angeles and distributed them through licensing and syndication deals with clients such as Yahoo Inc. and Hulu LLC.
The World Cup project, which resulted from a partnership with Hollywood marketing firm Momentum Entertainment Group, marks the first time the company is venturing abroad for celebrity coverage.
“It’s not about the sports score or who’s winning,” said RJ Williams, founder and chief executive of Young Hollywood. “We may touch on it, but it’s about pop culture and what’s going on in Rio with the World Cup as a background because celebrities will be there and athletes will be there.”
The Rio channel will kick off in the months leading up to the World Cup next June with videos online and maybe on TV.
Getting into international markets has been a long time goal of Williams’. The partnership with Momentum will help, as its parent company, Momentum Worldwide in New York, has a staff of 2,500 in 55 offices around the globe.
Williams started Young Hollywood in 2007, after running a production company out of his current Westwood office. After doing celebrity videos for television for four years, he decided it was time to make the jump online.
In its six years, Young Hollywood has evolved from a one-man operation into a staff of 24 with 10 employees working out of a studio in a suite at the Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills.
The Rio channel will serve as a home to the videos created by Young Hollywood and the team at Momentum Entertainment’s Brazil office. The majority of the video and Web content will be in English, but Williams said they are working out the details for creating additional content in Portuguese.
If the Rio channel proves successful, Williams hopes to open offices in major international cities that would create similar celebrity videos but for local audiences, and sell them through licensing and syndication deals.
In addition to traditional advertising, Young Hollywood has tried “branded content” – a mix of entertainment and paid advertising that goes beyond product placement by showcasing a brand in a video – such as a February segment showing actor Brian Baumgart, from the television show “The Office,” making his own Subway sandwich.
The company took a financial hit when it stopped display advertising on its website more than a year ago, but Williams said branded content has proven to be more lucrative.
Working together
Momentum Entertainment also creates branded content, along with original works such as TV drama series “Rogue” for DirecTV.
Chris Weil, chief executive of Momentum Worldwide, said the company will use Williams’ knowledge of creating celebrity videos and the two companies will work together to attract more advertisers and distribute the content to respective clients.
Rebecca Lieb, digital advertising and media analyst for Altimeter Group in San Mateo, said content marketing with techniques such as branded content is a trend that’s taken hold. Yet, it’s a delicate balance when it comes to pushing a brand’s message.
“Advertising is interruptive,” Lieb said. “Content is a pull strategy. It’s a marketing of attraction that you voluntarily participate in or is compelling. It has to be more around the brand than about a brand.”
While content marketing plays a big role on the advertising side, Williams said, it’s just one part of three revenue streams. Licensing and syndication are the other two divisions of the company. The company brings in more than six figures in total revenue each month.
Young Hollywood produces original celebrity-focused content inside its studio at the Four Seasons Hotel and make videos at major events such as Comic-Con in San Diego. Deals with its clients such as “Entertainment Tonight,” Hulu, Yahoo and AOL Inc. are customized to their needs.
Williams said some clients have the company on monthly retainer. Young Hollywood might agree to deliver 25 videos of nonexclusive content per month and in return receive a payment from the client each month. He added other deals are long term with clients paying additional costs if they request more content related to major entertainment events.
For example, a video segment featuring the late actor Cory Monteith, from the television show “Glee,” at his house hosting a barbeque was picked up by celebrity and entertainment news website Omg Insider two weeks ago after his death from a drug overdose.
“Our content gets syndicated all over the place on different stories,” Williams said.
Launching the Rio channel means he’ll be focusing more on the business side of Young Hollywood.
“I’ve never built a business infrastructure,” he said. “And that’s going to be the focus for 2014.”
