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Jellysmack’s Ezechiel Ritchie on helping creators go multi-platform to commercialise content

Jellysmack's country manager, Ezechiel Ritchie speaks to Mumbrella's Calum Jaspan about bringing new opportunities to the content creator economy to Australia.


In September, Thinkerbell’s Adam Ferrier wrote an op-ed here on Mumbrella, detailing the media fragmentation we are experiencing, and how it is hiding modern stars, such as Mr Beast.

Two months on, Jellysmack, an American content creator company has launched in Australia, in order to leverage the $133 billion global creators industry, with former Taboola and Google executive, Ezechiel Ritchie as country manager.

Jellysmack is “a creators company before anything” says Ritchie, about the company that has deals with some of the internet’s biggest names, including Mr Beast, PewDiePie and JoshDub. As Ferrier wrote previously, you may not have heard of these names, but many have. Millions in fact.

With 110 million subscribers on YouTube, more people than all but 12 countries in the world, PewDiePie is on another level when it comes to internet stars.

Jellysmack’s Ezechiel Ritchie

Most creators that are signed by Jellysmack started on one platform, and the aim of working with Jellysmack, is to integrate their content and “go multi-platform”, as Ritchie says.

“If you look at YouTube content creators, very often they will do well on YouTube. But they are not maximising any other social media platform. Essentially what we do is help them go multi-platform, which means incremental audiences, followed by engagement and a lot more revenue. So we do a lot more heavy lifting.”

Ritchie says that when creators see that some of the biggest online names in the world working with Jellysmack, they realise that there must be a reason for it.

“They [Jellysmack] must bring something to the table,” he says.

Australian creators, How Ridiculous

Often, he says that creators won’t think there is value in diversifying their content across to different platforms, but in reality the overlap is quite minimal.

Taking YouTube and Facebook for example, “the two biggest”, in terms of having the most advanced monetisation strategies, meaning it is a lot easier and lucrative for creators on these platforms, “the overlap between both platforms is less than 20%”.

“A lot of creators think “I’m already doing so well on YouTube”, but they don’t realise that they can do as well or better on Facebook, and probably get more revenue as well.”

On the other hand, Instagram and TikTok, Ritchie says are more geared towards brand partnerships.

“The user experience is completely different, the monetisation is completely different. It’s just super daunting, and they don’t have the resources or the time, and that’s why they partner with us because when we do it all, they don’t have to lift a finger, and they just reap the benefits of it.”

JoshDub

Locally, Jellysmack is working with some of Australia’s most popular creators to curate their content and grow their following across multiple different streams. After launching 2 months ago, it has 15 local creators on board, with those including JoshDub, How to Basic, Vincenzo’s Plate, Tannar, How Ridiculous, Tannir and more.

How Ridiculous, has amassed 6.64 million YouTube subscribers, 7.8 million TikTok followers and 2.5 million followers on Facebook for example.

The company also works with media companies, such as TV networks, radio stations, sports federations, publishers, “anyone with IP, who are very often sitting on a gold mine”.

“They don’t really know what to do with it.” Again, he says “they don’t have the time, the resources or the expertise to actually maximise that video content on social media platforms.”

Ritchie will be speaking at the Mumbrella Sports and Entertainment Summit in April to showcase the work Jellysmack is doing with Sony and Universal, an example of making the most out of these “gold mines” he says many companies are sitting on.

Mr Beast

Locally, the company is “pretty aggressively hiring” in order to tap into some of the creative talent here in Australia, as well as placing a focus on “working with media partners in 2022”.

“Australian content is so exportable,” says Ritchie. “Some of our local content creators like How to Basic, they have 17 million subscribers on YouTube, but actually their biggest audience is in the US.”

“If we decide to work with a partner, we know it’s going to work, because we have done due diligence, we have done testing to make sure that that content is going to trend well on the specific platform that we want to grow on, and that we will be able to drive X amount new followers or subscribers to those assets.”

While Ritchie speaks about it as if success online is formulaic, he believes that there has been a switch in mindset for those that have been brought up watching personalities like Mr Beast.

“Nowadays, kids want to become YouTube content creators. They don’t want to become celebrities anymore. They want to create content and there’s already been a shift.”

Ritchie says that of the 15 or so million content creators in the world currently, only around 0.1% are able to make a living out of it, and the aim of Jellysmack is to “grow that number, enabling as many people as possible to make a living out of that passion”.

“That’s what we do, all the things that they don’t want to do. We enable them to create the content, not annoying bits, the editing, the reformatting, the posting,  the content strategy, the user acquisition, et cetera. We let them do what thet love doing and what they’re good at, and we do the rest with our tech and data.”

“So it’s really a win-win once we actually get into a partnership with a media company or content creator.We only succeed when they succeed. If they don’t make any revenue, we don’t make any revenue. It’s  a win-win for the ecosystem.”

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