The 2008 election, featuring a ready-made caricature in Sarah Palin, was the first Presidential Election in which YouTube was part of the cultural ethos, and by most standards Barely Political emerged as the biggest buzz generator of that election cycle with Amber Lee Ettinger AKA Obama Girl, who made appearances on SNL and Bill O'Reilly after her hit "I Got a Crush in Obama" (ironically, made in 2007 when he was still a Senator) became one of the internet's most viral videos with 25.8 million views and 100 million overall channel views in 2008.
While Ettinger played the role of Obama Girl, it was Ben Relles
who recruited the talent, co-wrote the music, and invested $2,000 of his own
money to create the video series that would go on to revolutionize the way
YouTube would eventually influence political elections.
Relles, a Pennsylvania native, is a 1997 graduate of the
University of Wisconsin with a degree in journalism and a certificate in
business administration, and started his first online marketing company his
senior year of college. A decade later, Barely Political, would be his second
venture as he foresaw that internet video would be the new frontier.
Six years later, Barely Political is currently the 40th most
subscribed channel on youtube at 2.35 million subscribers and ranks 23rd in
page views with 1.6 billion. The site has expanded to an in-house team of writers,
performers, producers and the channel's director/editor in Tom Small. The
content has also expanded to music video parodies (known as the "Key of
Awesome" series) as well as parodies of comic book characters among other
series.
Additionally, Ben Relles served as VP of programming and content
development for Next New Networks which helps YouTube artists increase the visibility
of their channel. Next New Networks was bought out directly by YouTube and in
March of 2012, Relles was named head of creative development for YouTube's Next
Lab.
Q. Who are the comedy influences of you and the crew at Barely
Political?A: For me personally, my dad. He just cracks me up and it
was fun when we were launching the Barely Political channel that I was able to
get his advice on all that early decisions.. Aside from him, I'd say
sketch comedy shows I grew up watching -- Saturday Night Live and Mr. Show
being the biggest two.
I think the crew at Barely Political (the writers are Mark
Douglas, Todd Womack, and Bryan Olsen) all have different influences but that's
part of what keeps our videos unique. We have writers with years of
experience with sketch, improv and stand up and that serves us well for a
YouTube channel.
Q: What inspired you to
go in the field of comedy?
A: I always loved comedy and tried my best to find project where
I could try and be funny. I middle school I made short silly movies at
home. In college I wrote a humor column. After college I tried
doing stand up for a few years. But I really felt like I landed on a
something when I found YouTube. With YouTube you can make a short funny
video, and if it hits on something really funny then a few days later millions
of people are sharing it with their friends. That never gets old to me so I
want to stay connected to that.
Q. How do you think the landscape for politically oriented
comedy is different these days (in terms of both making comedy and watching
comedy) then it was 15 years ago before the widespread use of the internet and
how is it the same?
A: I think it's different in that the internet democratized
political comedy -- especially that's the case with what YouTube did. A
lot of that started with Jib Jab in the 2004 election when their videos were
being seen as much as Saturday Night Live or The Tonight Show or any other
mainstream political comedy channel. And then recently you see hundreds
of funny sketches on YouTube being done by people all over the world that are
funny and really original. Bad Lip Reading, Alphacat, and Sarah Silverman
all come to mind. I also think individuals have a chance to shape
people's perception of candidates through YouTube in ways you couldn't before.
Gaffes do become more costly when they are being remixed and spoofed
within 12 hours.
On the other hand in some ways the fundamentals of what makes
for great political comedy are very similar. People love seeing
politicians get called out on their BS, and I think the best political comedy
does that.
Q: Most rewarding part of your job for you and the crew at Barely Political?
A: For me it's getting to work with the Barely Political team.
I started the site but had no idea I'd get to work with such hilarious
people who would build the channel to over 2 billion views. I love that
they have built such a huge, loyal fan base.
Q: What would you say to newcomers who aren't familiar to your
brand about what Barely Political is today and why should they check it out?
A: We started as a political comedy channel, but that's not our
channel any more. We have different comedy videos for different people.
Comic book fans should check out our series "Super Therapy."
Pop music fans should check out "The Key of Awesome".
Everyone should check out our recent sketch "Deck Maintenance".
I thought it was pretty hilarious.
Q: Is it fair to say that you didn't do as much in the 2012
Cycle with politics? How much ambition on the part of your site was there
to replicate the magic of Obama girl.
I made the observation that you are more focused on comic book
geeks than political wonks in your demographic?
A: That is fair to say. I wouldn't say its comic book
geeks as main audience. Key of Awesome is nearly half our views, and
that's more aimed at music fans.
Obama Girl was a unique thing. A lot of people think that
character genuinely shaped people's opinions of Obama and the video is in
textbooks, museums, was on SNL, GMA, etc. But in terms of audience, our
channel still is more geared toward pop culture than politics. Obama Girl
is at about 100 million total views across the series. Key of Awesome is
closer to 1 billion.
Q: So in the last four years, you've moved away from political
humor. Was that a conscious decision at some point to decide to move in a
different direction or did you simply watch the traffic and follow it?
A: Right, during the 2008 election we were doing mostly
political sketches. We made a lot of Obama Girl videos, and we were
working with the Gregory Brothers on the Autotune the News videos. Then
we wanted to start a new channel for non-political sketches, but we already had
so many subscribers on the Barely Political channel we figured we'd just put everything
in the same place.
Q: Was rebranding your site from Barely Political to Key of Awesome a difficult move?
A: The Key of Awesome took off and became popular so quickly it
made the decision easy to have the Key of Awesome series on our Barely Political
channel. But I'd say it was tricky in 2009 trying to balance the Obama
Girl videos with the Key of Awesome with some of the remixes Michael Stevens
(now the host of Vsauce) was writing which I thought were brilliant, but were
tricky to have all on one channel. I think we have about 2 billion views
so far on the channel, and over 1 billion of them are from the Key of Awesome
so we've made it work.
Q: You're current position is to promote people's channels and help people
promote their channels better. Do you think that the success of one channel on YouTube happens at the expense of another person's channel (in other words, is
it a zero sum game?), or that in your position, you can help competing channels
each get more views?
A: No I don't think the success of one one channel happens at
the expense of another channel, there are always new audiences coming to
YouTube and spending more time on the site.
Q: On an appearance on Anderson Live, you helped a girl follow her passion of making videos for her own YouTube channel. How often do you get the opportunity to directly reach out to someone like that and help them?
A: I love working with people who are brand new to making videos
YouTube. My usual advice to people is to just get started and posting
videos and not over think the first one. Make videos about something you
love and see how it goes. When they make that leap and then become a
regular YouTube creator I love it.
Q. According to UW-Madison News You invested $2,000 into the
Obama Girl video when you created it. Did you expect to recoup your investment
monetarily? YouTube lowers the barrier for entry significantly, but for the
people that invest money into making a better product, do you advise them to
invest that money with the mindset that they'll be able to make it back if the
video is good enough?
A: I did think we'd make the money back. I thought the
video would be popular and we were ready to go with iTunes, T-Shirts and ring
tones and all that. But creators certainly don't need $2000 to make great
content on YouTube. In most cases I think YouTube creators first build an
audience, then once they do they start putting more of the adsense towards more
ambitious videos.
Q. Could you elaborate on the music making process at Key of
Awesome? If I'm not mistaken, you have some people do the singing beforehand
and everyone on screen is lip-synching. Why do you do it this way? Also, why do
you only have a couple people sing rather than some of the actors singing
themselves?
A: The actors definitely do the singing usually. They just
record it in advance to make sure they get a version that sounds great.
Mark Douglas writes the lyrics. And often he also sings the lyrics
and stars in the video.
Q: Is Kristen Brancaccio of The Intern Diaries really still an intern [Ed Note: Kristen Branaccio was just featured on Project Greenlight as a finalist], or is she like the Tonight Show's Ross the
intern, where she was originally an intern, and then kept the title after
graduating the internship.
A: Right the latter. She started as an intern, and now
helps with all aspects of the channel. She's awesome.
Q: Key of Awesome is very interactive with the Comment Videos, is that part of some strategy to pull people in or is that
just fun to make?
A: I would say they are fun to make, but end up being a great
way to interact with fans.
Q: You've hired more than a couple people at Barely Political to
help write. Is that helpful to have different people write one parody song or
does it tend to clutter up the process. Does one person write one parody song
or is a Key of Awesome song written by committee?
A: I would say with these guys it helps. Everything is
written by Mark Douglas, Todd Womack and Bryan Olsen. Those guys work
really well together and I think most videos at this point the writing is
collaborative in one way or another.
Q: You, Ben, are fairly anonymous to Key of Awesome/Barely
Political subscribers which is ironic because even the director shows up in the
videos here and there. Is that by design?
A: I wouldn't say it's by design. I started the channel 6
years ago, and I love the whole team and the channel, but day to day I don't
get involved in the production process of the videos. And I can't keep a
straight face on camera for some reason.
Q: How much are you a music studio? Is it easy to
reproduce the music (do you just use a pre-recorded track like karaoke?) for
the Key of Awesome, or do you make the music from scratch?
A: Not a music studio, but do make music from scratch.
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