Big Frame, a YouTube talent management company, will use its newly announced $3 million in outside investment to significantly expand its production and marketing efforts, CEO Steve Raymond told TheWrap.
On Wednesday night, Raymond and the Big Frame team will announce a series of new shows that will debut between July and the fall. Many of them cater to the audience for its special effects-focused channel BAMMO, which Big Frame launched in April as part of YouTube’s premium content initiative.
"When building our audience by advertising about new shows to fans of our existing shows, we found a fairly heterogeneous audience that can be a handful," Raymond said. "We learned over the last couple of months how to use that to our advantage."
Among the new shows are “Weapons of Mass Production,” “Heroes and Villains” and "5 Minutes of FX.” The latter gives a special effects professional five minutes to do a particular type of effect.
Big Frame will also ramp up programming outside of its BAMMO channel, including a show called "Girls Guide" and a suite of other original shows that they will produce.
Also read: YouTube Talent Company Big Frame Secures $3M Seed Round
This reflects a greater shift in Big Frame's strategy. Founded in July of 2011, Big Frame has had two core businesses — offering management services to talent like MysteryGuitarMan and DeStorm power and monetizing their content by connecting the talent with brands and selling ads for their videos.
Sarah Penna, who founded the company, has shepherded the talent management. Raymond then came on to run the business.
However, in order to transform into a full-fledged studio, it will beef up its production and marketing teams — on top of adding to the core areas.
“We’re starting to invest in more content that looks like shows and we need to have somebody where that’s all they think about — what shows do we want, what partnerships do we need to find an audience," Raymond said.
Here's a sizzle reel for the new shows: