How YouTube's Top Trial Channel Covered the Diddy Case | Creator Upload

0:00Welcome to Creator Upload, your Creator Economy podcast. I'm Lauren Schnipper.

0:04Rachel Stockman:And I'm Joshua Cohen. Lauren? Yes. How you doing? Fine, and you? I'm doing great, thank you. Great. I was thinking about how parents of the future are going to have it just so much easier. Okay. And I'm not talking about in the context of Jetsons-like robotic helpers around the house. Oh, Jetsons robotic help. Great. Do people know what the Jetsons are? That was so great. Go on. I'm not talking about it like that. I'm talking about it in the context of you're going to be able to take your children's favorite pieces of intellectual property and have AI generate whatever you want them to do. So imagine like Bluey teaching your kids who it will call by name to brush their teeth or eat their vegetables or anything else.

0:56Rachel Stockman:My kid does love Louie. My kid loves Louie. Exactly, right? But like, I also just feel like, do you know who Tim Simons is? Do you know who Tim Simons is? No, who's Tim Simons? Tell me all about him. Tim Simons. So annoying.

1:13He played Jonah on Veep. He plays the brother. But he wants this really funny, big, awkward, like comedy, you know, comedian or whatever. Whatever, yes. No, Tim Simons. Yes. Okay. And so anyway, he came in when I was at Facebook. we were doing early days of video and we had this, um, kind of, we, we recreated like a fake version of the watch what happens live set and like the studio space in LA. And we were like getting celebrities to come and like do videos. And it was such early days on, uh, in video on, on Facebook. So like nobody knew what to do. So we just did like five questions or whatever.

1:41And I will never forget this Tim Simon. So I kind of knew vaguely and he was really, he's a great guy. Uh, we asked him like, what is your favorite kind of music? And he basically was like, I hate music now because I hate the fact that like you can get your hands on any piece of music at any time. He's like, he's this whole diatribe about it makes it so incredibly uninteresting. And it's like, it's, it's, there's, it's so easy to get that it's hard to find. He's like, so I've gotten really into bluegrass because like nobody cares about bluegrass and like, you can't really find it. So it's like the hunt of it and like figuring it out and learning about it is really interesting.

2:15So I thought about that oddly, like a lot about like just his diatribe on that. And I think so to your point, when you have your hands, you can get anything. It's like, I don't know. I think it might kind of suck.

2:29Rachel Stockman:So that's a fun premise for a Portlandia sketch. But here in the real world, this is going to be amazing. Everybody loves having access to everything possible at any given moment. And the scales definitely tip in the balance. The scales definitely tip in the balance of having access to these things and being exposed to it versus this serendipitous discovery that we all miss. I totally get it. I miss that too. I understand. In terms of parenting, you're not going to opt to go on the app and choose Wolverine or Captain Tsubasa or whoever to tell your kids the importance of eating leafy greens. I mean, we do that already with shows like Daniel Tiger.

3:10You got to try new things because it might taste good. So yeah.

3:15Rachel Stockman:But imagine that on steroids. I know and I don't love it. You asked me a question. You asked me a question and I answered it. Anyway, is something already being created that allows this? Is this why you bring this up? I was just thinking more about Roblox integrating different types of IP into its platform. YouTube Shorts has come out with a variety of new AI effects. You can upload photos of yourself that VO3 is now going to animate into different situations. I tried this out at Cannes because they had a booth set up at the Google Beach in the YouTube space where I uploaded a photo of myself.

3:51Rachel Stockman:And then all of a sudden, three seconds later, I was playing with a bunch of puppies or a bunch of tennis balls were falling from the sky. Kind of whatever I wanted to do. And so you just take this to its logical extreme. We're both parents. We're thinking about the best ways we can parent. Mine obviously is with screens. I mean, I am. interaction that kind of like never happens but like maybe once a month and then that outweighs everything else and I think this is just going to be the future and this is just like where things are going with the IP of these companies they're going to want to exploit it as much as possible in the future if parents in 10-15 years can buy packs for 20, 50, 100 bucks a month even to get these creators that their kids love to help them parent their children I mean come on It's going to be a game changer.

4:39Rachel Stockman:I mean, I hear you. I mean, I hear you. Okay, and before we get to some big stories, we are going to have Rachel Stockman on, who's the president of Law and Crime, which is the number one trial channel on YouTube. And she's going to talk about some really interesting learnings from the Diddy trial, besides just the Diddy trial in and of itself, which I think we all learned a lot about the world. Probably too much. Probably way too much. A little too much about baby oil and its use cases. But before we get to that, let's get to some big stories. First up is I want to talk YouTube earnings. YouTube ad revenue nears$10 billion in the last quarter.

5:12Josh, why don't you take us through the numbers?

5:14Rachel Stockman:Lauren, another quarter for YouTube that just keeps going up and in the right direction. So like you said, YouTube brought in$9.8 billion in advertising revenue in the quarter. That's up around 10 % from Q1 of$8.9 billion, but up 13 % year over year last year. Sunder Machai shouted out YouTube Shorts, which now generates 200 billion daily views as one of the proponents of that increase. And also teased a little bit of what's in store for YouTube in the future, including the Chargers versus Chiefs NFL game for which YouTube won the exclusive streaming rights for. This is really interesting. We talked about it before, but they're going to stream the NFL game from Brazil for free on YouTube, basically as an advertisement for one, the NFL.

6:01Rachel Stockman:to YouTube, three NFL Sunday ticket, and then four, all the different types of brands that they're probably going to incorporate into this broadcast that I'm guessing are really going to want to be part of it because of the global reach and scale. I think this will be the most viewed NFL game potentially ever, maybe even more than the Super Bowl. I know that's saying a lot, but if you think about the global reach of YouTube and the internet penetration of the world, it definitely could be, which would be crazy, which my guess is what they're going for. at least the most viewed outside of the Super Bowl, but maybe they could get into Super Bowl status.

6:34Rachel Stockman:So Sundar, obviously excited about that too. He mentioned it in the earnings call. And the Alphabet CEO also talked about how AI is working for the company. They're going to increase capital expenditures this year up to$85 billion. Last year in 2024, it was more like $52 billion they spent on capital expenditures. So a huge increase on spending to stay on top of the AI world. And you've seen that, like we talked about at the top, manifest itself on YouTube, going to continue to do that. Like, again, this is no surprise. This is the front page of Know That Magazine. YouTube earnings keep going up, but it's cool to put some numbers behind it.

7:12Yeah, I love it. All right. I want to talk about something that might just seem like a little bit of a download, but I think it's actually a larger story, which is that Prime, of course, the beverage that came out with Logan Paul and KSI is down 42 % year-over-year sales. What I think this speaks to, obviously, this is a huge creator brand by these huge creators, and it had so much heat and, for lack of a better word, virality. And I think that especially I can speak about like Logan Paul sort of and Paul Brothers in general sort of made a career around virality, right? It was always like shocking, shocking, viral, viral, viral.

7:47And the truth of the matter is, is like to have and build a sustainable brand, I think the lesson here is you can't rely on virality. There was an article a few weeks ago talking about this decline and how like all these kids bought it and then they just kind of never did again and they kind of grew up and got over it. And in order, you know, to me, this is sort of like the coax of the world looking over being like, yeah, how do you like us now? Like it ain't easy, buddy, to be here for 100 years. You know what I mean? And so I just think this is really interesting. And I think that it speaks to, listen, building a brand as a creator is a great idea, but it's not for the faint of heart.

8:24There's an amazing amount of momentum that you can get. And then I think that you have to have real marketing professionals that come and help you have sustainable campaigns and reach new customers. This is all in sticky ways. And right now, they're clearly not doing this. And I mean, obviously, there's value here, but they've had a lot of controversy. They've also also have controversy with like the FDA and the ingredients and all that kind of jazz. And if they were marketing to kids and it shouldn't be and all that sort of stuff. But I don't know, I think it's just a really interesting kind of tell around brands and the industry that everybody was super hot on.

9:01I mean, Beast basically, listen, his burger, and by the way, and also it speaks to food and beverage. Food and beverage is a very, very difficult category because you're dealing with sustainability, you know, ingredients, health, you know, all these kind of things. And Beast, you know, with Beast Burger, like he, you know, I think he's still embroiled in the lawsuit with the people that he was partnering with that because the quality was garbage after a while. And now with Feastables, it would seem that he's built a much sort of kind of much more sustainable and real business with like, you know, that doesn't feel like as viral, for lack of a better word again.

9:36So I just think it's very interesting. And it speaks to just like, we're still early in this in this industry. And there's going to be a lot of sort of stops and starts and sort of companies that come and go and, you know, and we'll see what happens. What do you think about this, Josh?

9:50Rachel Stockman:So Lauren, this is all citing a Serkana food report that Darren Roval, who's a business journalist, quoted on X, formerly Twitter. There's also been some other outlets that have claimed that sales are down as much as 90 percent and i've just some first-hand experience with this my kids maybe one summer two summers ago definitely were always asking for prime and either they've aged out of it or the trickle-down effect of the kids in middle school liking it because the kids in high school wanted it is no longer there because the kids in high school don't necessarily want it anymore but i just think that just quick double click on that for a minute because it's like, Gatorade doesn't, you don't age really out of Gatorade.

10:32You know what I mean? Like, I just think that, like, think about other brands. Like, it's not, that's why I think this is like, you have to go beyond this, like, one viral moment, right? Like, it's like, people drink Gatorade their entire lives. I don't know. So it's sort of, that doesn't even make sense, age out of it. I mean, it does, but it doesn't. You know what I mean?

10:48Rachel Stockman:And so if we're looking back at it and trying to plot their trajectory from a couple of years ago, What would you do if you were in charge of the brand? Would you like meter this out more? Would you not have it be as viral early on? What would you do? No, no. I think I'm not saying it shouldn't be viral early on, but I think you need I think people I think people in general get marketing so wrong. And this is an example of that. I think a lot of times people use it too early or never use it at all because they feel like they don't need it. And it feels like that's what this is. We're in column two here.

11:18Right. Because they felt like they've got these big stars. It's free marketing. And I'm sure there were professional marketers there, but like they were really kind of just like, you know, grasping onto this one thing and not thinking about the long tail and the new customers and that sort of stuff. So it's like what they should have done if they were in a great position because they had product market fit and they had a big moment. Like the best time to like I've seen so many startups kind of make this mistake. And from, you know, my sort of outsider point of view, the time to spend money on market is not from zero to like, you know, 10.

11:48It's from what it's to get from 10 to scale. Right. And so they're a little bit in between because I kind of came from scale. So they needed to get scale back down to sort of the base customer and the loyal customers. And they needed to really spend time with people, you know, getting to know who their customers are and really expanding upon that. And so I just think this is a move where they didn't think about kind of the brand awareness and the affinity. It was just more about like taking advantage of the viral moments. And so that's what I would have done differently is done the different types of campaigns and gone into the communities and get people to really like latch onto it.

12:20I mean, you go to the, I've been to the Coca-Cola museum in Atlanta and you go in there and you, I know you've been there too. And you watch the video that you, that you watched when you first walk in. I mean, I mean, you're crying. I've seen it three times. I've taken my, it's like, you're crying because it's like all about like these moments that Coke is there with you. And I was like, totally, I don't even drink Coca-Cola and I'm like, love it. And I try, you know what I mean? Like, it's just like, and that's just not, I mean, they didn't do any of

12:45Rachel Stockman:Yeah, it's also the benefit of being a more than century years old brand. Obviously, like, but you know what I mean? Like, but there's plenty of, there's a lot of beverages out there. You know what I mean? I mean, LaCroix, I mean, I mean, I'm basically, I should have stock in that company. You know what I mean? And so obviously the people that were behind this thought that they could reach some form of exit velocity. Like if they push hard enough, fast enough, early on enough, they can get out into the stratosphere and then they just be an established brand that would be a staple. But if these numbers are accurate, it looks like it's proving that that can't necessarily be the case.

13:17Yeah. I mean, listen, we see it all the time. It's like I was thinking about Clubhouse this morning. Sometimes I think about Clubhouse.

13:23Rachel Stockman:I was thinking about Clubhouse. It might be one of those weeks. It might be one of those nostalgic Clubhouse weeks. I just like feel badly for Clubhouse. Like, what were they going to do? I mean, everybody wanted Clubhouse. And then everybody like got out of their houses and they're like, we don't want no Clubhouse no more. You know what I mean? So it's like, I just feel bad for Clubhouse. I don't really feel bad for the Prime guys, but I feel kind of bad for Clubhouse. But it happens, you know? Two other things that this brings to mind. Brendan Gann, who's been a friend of the podcast for a while, has this great quote that wasn't his, but he references it a lot.

13:50Rachel Stockman:And it is, nothing kills bad brands faster than great marketing. And I'm not saying Prime was a bad brand. Hold on. Hold. Nothing kills bad brands faster than great marketing. Yeah. Okay. Go on. Because if the marketing is fantastic, people are going to know your product's not great way sooner. I don't know if this applies, but go on. So I'm not saying Prime was a not great product, but if it did have room for improvement or needed to be improved upon, the great marketing that KSI and Logan Paul had to get it into all of these retailers and get it sold out of all these retailers for multiple weeks on end was maybe in the end not a great benefit for them.

14:33Rachel Stockman:You can contrast that to Mr. Beast, who launched Feastables, did some great fanfare, wasn't necessarily happy with the product, wasn't happy with consumer response to the product and how it tasted, went back, reformulated the whole formula, came out with new packaging, new recipe, new fanfare, and more. And now it seems to be doing really great. I also I think something to know about that is that it's well documented that he's very passionate about this chocolate. And I don't know how passionate Logan Paul KSI are about energy drinks, like as much as they are about the fact that they could sell an energy drink.

15:07Does that make sense? Like, like, I think Beast because, you know, he's, you know, he's got all this like stomach issues and this and that. And he made it so he could, you know, eat this and that sort of stuff. And it was really, really important to him. And so I feel like that sort of speaks to like this is something that he really cares about and wants to build and make great. So I see the point.

15:24Rachel Stockman:All right. I want to get to Rachel Stockman now, who is the president of Law & Crime, the number one trial channel on YouTube. She's going to talk about one of the biggest trials they covered recently and the learnings there. We're so excited to have Rachel Stockman, who is the president of Law & Crime, which is the number one trial focused channel on YouTube. She's here to talk about a recent trial that they covered and some learnings that they had. Rachel, welcome to Creator Upload. Hello. Hello. I'm so excited to be here. I am a big fan of your podcast, so I'm thrilled to be on to talk about this.

15:55Yes. So we are the number one true crime YouTube channel. And one of the big cases we just covered was the P. Diddy case. And we've been really closely covering this for about a year and a half now. So we really saw an increased viewership as we are getting closer to the trial. And then we were covering it live for 36 days straight while this trial was happening. And what was really interesting, Lauren, about this is that cameras were not allowed in federal court, as you probably know. So what we saw a lot of times was those sketches that were coming from court. So we had our talent here in New York City and also some of our reporters going to the courthouse, updating our YouTube audience live as it was happening minute by minute.

16:48And we every day got real courtroom transcripts. We brought those in and created AI videos recreating what the jurors were really seeing in court. So it was a very interesting experience for us. We saw huge viewership over the course of the entire case, 235 million views. Wow. So yes, this was significant. And I think what differentiated our coverage from a lot of the other creators out there was that we have real journalists, we have real lawyers that have covered hundreds and hundreds of these cases. And so not only were we giving them accurate information up to the date information? We were tailoring our coverage specifically for YouTube, unlike any other media outlet out there.

17:42Our audience was YouTube and we were employing a YouTube first strategy. That's so cool. And so was it the first time you'd really gone so deep in AI video? I'm curious about that and what you if you can share like what programs you guys use, like, you know, because that's obviously something that people are thinking a lot about. Yes. So we had been kind of toying and practicing and experimenting with it for the last year or so. And when Donald Trump, right before he got elected, you'll recall there was a trial in New York City where he was on trial and cameras actually weren't allowed for that.

18:17During that case, we started experimenting with using the real transcripts and using different models. We actually used five different models to create the videos that you see on our YouTube. So we didn't use one program. We used like 11 labs for dubbing some of the voices and we used a bunch of different AI generation tools. That's so cool. And in terms of just engagement, are you finding that like what's the relative engagement from the AI videos versus like the live commentators that you're seeing on your channel? So here's the thing about it. We were a little, I'll be completely honest, we were a bit nervous to roll this out because we really want to, we have quite a bit of credibility in the true crime and legal community.

19:01And we didn't want to do anything where people felt like, oh, this is fake news. So we were very careful to disclose exactly what we were doing when using the AI generation and make it explicit that we're using real courtroom transcripts to create it. And overwhelmingly, our audience loved it. They said this is exactly the reason why AI was invented. Back in the day, you had courtroom sketches. You had graphics. Now we have AI generation. It's just another tool in our toolbox to tell these stories. And you mentioned like you guys have a YouTube first audience and you're really catering to that.

19:40What does that mean? That means everything we do on a daily basis, we're creating content for our YouTube audience first and foremost. We then take a bit of a 360 approach like other digital creators. We can create shows based on what we create for YouTube. We have two fast channels that we distributed on. We have a very robust production unit where we use a lot of the IP that we get from covering these cases and covering these big true crime cases. For example, we covered Koberger, Brian Koberger sentencing yesterday and saw huge viewership on that. He's the guy who murdered in cold blood these Iowa, sorry, Idaho's college students.

20:21Very sad case. And so we covered that. Our journalists were there. Reporters were there in Idaho covering the sentencing. And then we're now creating a documentary about it and distributing it beyond YouTube. But it all starts with YouTube.