This story was originally published on Passionfruit.
We’re sitting down with leaders on the business side of the creator economy to get their best advice for creators looking to launch and develop their careers. This week we spoke to Bonnie Black, a senior director at Jubilee Media who is spearheading a new love and relationship brand for the company called Nectar.
Previously covered by Passionfruit, you might recognize Jubilee for its provocative video titles like, “Flat Earthers vs Scientists,” “6 Non-Virgins vs 1 Secret Virgin,” or “Do All Teen Moms Think the Same?” Jubilee’s ethos is to cultivate empathy by exposing its audience to perspectives and identities they might not typically encounter in their day-to-day lives. Jubilee started as a non-profit YouTube project in 2010, before becoming a for-profit media company in 2016 and expanding into other forms of media like film. It currently has over 7.5 million subscribers on YouTube alone.
In September, Jubilee announced it raised $1.1 million in funding and signed with titan talent agency WME. Jubilee simultaneously launched Nectar, a brand centered around love and relationship content. While Nectar’s YouTube channel pulls from many Jubilee fan-favorite video formats, it also adopts a first-person stylized voice and is planning on building a dating community that will be unique from Jubilee’s.
We spoke with Black about how Jubilee is “reimagining” its old hits, why Nectar decided to take on the first-person voice, the success of involving audience members in Jubilee and Nectar content, what creators can learn from Jubilee’s community management strategies, and more.
Black started as a director at Jubilee in 2019. She directed videos for a variety of Jubilee’s most popular series, including belief opposition experiment show Middle Ground, game show Odd One Out, dating series Versus 1, and sex and sexual health series Sex Ed. Black told Passionfruit Jubilee will be pulling from some of these successful video formats while attempting to approach love in a different, more personal way.
“We’re bringing back a lot of old favorites, and re-imagining them, and pushing them further,” Black said.
Launched in September, Nectar’s new video series largely mimicked some of the pacing, topics, and structures proven effective on Jubilee. Series like Versus 1 reappeared on the page, and new series like dating simulator Build-a-Boo pulled from the game show and social experiment structures popularized on Jubilee. Nectar’s YouTube channel currently has over 50,300 subscribers, and its videos received over 2.7 million views.
