Twitter’s Niche Moves Into Non-Branded Content With Josh Peck, Miel Bredouw, More

Twitter-owned Niche, which has connected 50,000 digital influencers with brands for sponsored content deals since its acquisition in 2015, is giving a handful of notable Twitter video personalities more creative control with an initiative dubbed Creator Originals.

Rather than tapping creators to develop branded videos driven by advertiser briefs, Creator Originals will initially enable several former Vine luminaries — including Josh Peck, Sara Hopkins, Matt Cutshall, Aaron Chewning, and Miel Bredouw — to develop non-branded shows that marketers can sponsor via in-stream (or pre-roll) ads.

“We’re now enabling creators to produce the kind of content that they want,” Niche’s head of U.S. content strategy, Katherine Rundell, tells Tubefilter, “and giving brands the opportunity to tie into projects with a longer shelf life.” Wendy’s will serve as the launch sponsor for Creator Originals, which Twitter unveiled at its second annual NewFronts presentation this evening.

A total of eight new episodic shows — some of which are scripted — mark a push by Twitter into the lifestyle vertical as well as a grab for younger viewers, given that much of Twitter’s video programming to date has focused on streaming sports and news. The Creator Originals shows will comprise six to eight episodes apiece — each of which will be between three to five minutes in length — which Rundell said was the platform’s “sweet spot for video tune-in.” Shows will be distributed weekly on creators’ Twitter pages, and also promoted prominently within users’ feeds.

Rundell added that while the initial slate doesn’t feature any live programming, future launches could. She also emphasized that brand-safety was paramount in tapping the original round of creator partners.

Check out the slate of the eight forthcoming Creator Originals — which Twitter says don’t have a release date as of yet — below.

• Born And Bred with @ItsJoshPeck: Josh uncovers and shares stories of unique individuals in small towns. His pilot episode goes behind-the-scenes into life of a teenage hip-hop dancer who has made a name for himself through his dance group ‘Prodigy‘.

• City Tours with @SayHop: An informative, fun, adventurous series centered around creator Sara Hopkins touring through different cities in the United States. Every episode will cover a different aspect of a specific city in a Travel Channel-style documentary.

• Wolf It Down with @TylerFlorence: Tyler takes us on behind the scenes tours of different food and lifestyle related activities. His pilot episode follows him foraging for mushrooms in Northern California.

• Voodoo Dating with @MattCutshall: Matt teams up with various female hosts to provide dating advice to two hopeful singles. They’ll send the two on a blind date while secretly providing hilarious dating tips via in-ear microphones.

• Bar Stars with @AaronChewning: A quirky comedy series starring Aaron Chewning who plays a variety of typical characters you’d find at your local dive bar. Each episode will center around a new dive bar character — an overly protective doorman, a guy looking for a fight, a condescending bartender, the list goes on.

• Paint Away with @Miel: Each episode, Miel will paint away her problems while walking the viewer through her creative and emotional process until the final masterpiece is unveiled.

• Style Series with @Brittanysky: Brittany Sky interviews the most stylish up-and-coming female personalities about their personal style inspiration.

• SWIFF with @wuzgood: Wuz Good plays a serious sneakerhead and unfocused slacker that has his boring life turned upside down when he suddenly gains super-speed and is thrust into a world of heroes, villains, and superpowers.