Hipsters cannot live by integrity alone
And so to yesterday’s BEfest conference, where the man behind the Fully Sick Rapper, the Bondi Hipsters and the Jungle Boys Christiaan Van Vuurren admitted: “I’m legitimately broker than I have been in my entire life”.
The revelation might be somewhat surprising given the Bondi Hipsters have a new ABC2 sketch show Soul Mates coming out in a fortnight, and have recently done an ad for Old Spice as well.
However, speaking at the Mumbrella Question Time panel at the end of the day van Vuuren, who plays Dom in the Bondi Hipsters, explained: “People are remarkably savvy to what their audiences will be ok with, and that’s been the case with us.
“I’m legitimately broker than I’ve ever been in my entire life, we’ve said no to some pretty big amounts of money on the way through that would have helped pay rent, but we’ve been looking at the long term goal of what’s going to build our audience and what’s going to maintain our audience.”
He also admitted when they first created the idea for the Bondi Hipsters he hoped a fashion brand might come and link up with them.
“When we first cooked up the Bondi Hipsters idea I thought this would be a great idea for a General Pants or a Glue type store, someone to help us foot the bill for production,” he said.
“It’s in the fashion world, so it could be a thing where they integrate into the show, and we put some of our silly designs into the store as a way of integrating into the show, or they get a pre-roll with ‘this is bought to you by General Pahnts’, but we never ended up getting that phone call so we never actively pursued it.
“We decided from the start we wanted to grow this thing and move it forward. We had a few chances early on but they weren’t brands we wanted to integrate those characters with, and we’ve tried with those characters to not do things they wouldn’t do. So for example a Telstra or a CommBank they would be very anti-establishment against.”
They are saavy in understanding how to respond and grow their audience, but obviously not in their management. As someone who works in Content Marketing, this would be the easiest sell ever. This is a perfect example of how the USA does it better than Austarlia.
Look at Epic Rap Battles of History, that started much like Bondi Hipsters, but content providers (YouTube, Funny or Die, College Humour etc., realised the power of successful content and how to partner it with brands and are making huge deals from it. I just came from San Franciso and they are crying out for more series like Bondi Hipsters because the model is so successful. BRB getting Dom’s number
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Maybe I’m wrong but it appears that Christiaan is on the right track with respecting his own vision and audience. The longer he holds off on letting his creations get raped, the better opportunities he’ll reap. Very curious to see what’s in store with this model that gives hope to anyone who lives to create and connect.
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Sorry to be pedantic but typo:
Hispters cannot live by integrity alone
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Hi Jenna,
Not pedantic, helpful. Thanks for flagging.
Cheers,
Alex – editor, Mumbrella
Maybe the world isn’t ready for such multifaceted satire.
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I don’t understand these guys, they’re so one note. Maybe it’s a Sydney thing, maybe its just not my thing. But surely if they’re so desperate for money they should perhaps stop waiting by the phone for a company to call them and make some calls themselves. And didn’t they do ads for The Iconic a little while ago? This just sounds more like bad management than anything else.
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Minor pedantic detail, but isn’t it a little disingenuous to say he is the ‘man behind… Jungle Boys’ … wasn’t Jungle Boys founded by Jason Burrows and his partners years before the Van Vuurren Brothers joined them as directors?
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