Want to create great branded content? It’s far from a piece of cake. Three YouTube creators explain what marketers need to do to deliver the perfect video partnership.
You’ll have seen it countless times: a celebrity awkwardly endorsing a product they have no affiliation with in a sponsored post. It can feel hollow and transactional, particularly when today’s YouTube viewers are increasingly craving the return of authenticity and connection.
Many of today’s popular creators are avoiding this fate by focusing on their individuality, using their persona to build up large followings in niche interests, such as gaming, sports, and food.
As a result, these YouTube creators offer brands a gateway to an engaged and receptive audience. Often with millions of subscribers, they’re now celebrities in their own right and their channels provide platforms for brands to advertise more naturally.
Branded content nowadays — when done right — is more than a transactional piece of advertising. It is a partnership: creators want to feel comfortable leveraging their channel’s authority to promote your brand while retaining their carefully crafted style and personality.
So what goes into making a great piece of branded content? To find out, we enlisted the help of three major YouTube creators from across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. They share their experiences producing branded content, and explain how to get the best out of a collaboration.
The brand’s presence should be like the dressing on a salad — just enough to make things better. It shouldn’t overwhelm you with the whole bottle
Building rapport with a creator is vital
Meet Jesse Chuku, better known online as Chewkz. In a previous life, he was a professional basketball player. He is now a content creator with 3.8 million YouTube subscribers at the time of writing.
One of Chewkz’s recent collaborations was with HP for its new Omen gaming laptop. Chuku met the HP team through 00Nation, a community which brings together creators and talent across sport, music, and entertainment. Their shared interests in gaming built a strong relationship early on, and the brand and creator realised they were a good fit together.
“It’s [meeting in person] the least common way to create these connections,” explains Chuku, “but in my experience, they’ve always turned out to be the best way to gauge who you’ll be working with.”
“These creators are becoming media channels at a size where they can win against traditional media channels. The talent we work with at 00Nation, including Chuku, are authentic, engaged, and actively seeking to work with us,” explains Stefan Vermeul, head of gaming marketing northwest Europe at HP.
He explains how the relationship developed further on set during recording as Chuku came up with ideas for additional content, and that quickly turned into a polished, produced video. “You have to trust the creator to think like a marketer themselves. They’ll happily work on ideas because they understand your marketing objectives.”
For Chuku, knowing that the brand trusts him is important. “I want the content to do well and the brand wants it to do well. It is in the best interest of the brand to let me do my thing as a creator.” His skill is in introducing the product into his content so that it doesn’t feel like a “throwaway moment”, nor is it too prominent that it’s obviously an ad.
“The brand’s presence should be like the dressing on a salad — just enough to make things better. It shouldn’t overwhelm you with the whole bottle.”
Once the video is complete, uploaded and engagement figures begin to roll in, it is here where Chuku believes the partnership’s value lies. “It’s not just about one video,” he says. A longer partnership could help integrate the brand more naturally, and help convey a message over a longer period of time. “And within my library of content, the next one might go viral. The viewer scrolls down through my feed and there’s the brand video.”
The biggest lesson for brands, though? Hone your outreach. Says Chuku: “You can see the difference between a blanket message and when a brand reaches out with a specific brief, even picking a video of mine that they like.”
Creators are not billboards — we have a community of viewers
Brands must trust creators
Charles Gilles-Compagnon is a creator based in France. He set up his YouTube channel, FastGoodCuisine, 11 years ago. He initially created his videos to help his friends learn how to make fast food at home with a gourmet twist using his experience as a chef. His YouTube channel now has 5.1 million subscribers, and he has since launched his own line of restaurants, Pepe Chicken, in France and Belgium.
Early brand partnerships came through the channel’s niche. “The first brand contact I had was someone saying to my father that ‘we’d love to work with your son because he’s famous in the food industry’,” explains Gilles-Compagnon. Initially the collaborations were with food brands, but since then his channel has expanded to include more mainstream content — and with it a larger audience and broader brand partnerships.
Gilles-Compagnon says to get the best out of the partnership brands should limit their objectives by deciding on whether their goal is to promote a product launch, broader brand awareness, or to increase website traffic. “That way, the creator can conjure up the best possible vision for what the brand wants to achieve.”
Trusting the creator to work towards those goals is the next step. He says: “Creators are not billboards — we have a community of viewers. You need a good match between brand and creator, and then let the creator get to work. I say no to 90% of the requests I get because I want creative freedom. The more free you are as a creator, the more the branded content will work.”
FastGoodCuisine’s recent partnership with ice cream brand Ben & Jerry’s, thrived on this freedom. Gilles-Compagnon was able to create an engaging video, aligned to his channel’s style and personality, while organically bringing the brand into the video.
In recent years, Gilles-Compagnon has found that video production has evolved so much that it now requires a longer lead time. He explains: “People won’t watch low quality video content. Three years ago we might film something, edit it and upload it in one day and it would go down very well. But today we might take two months before we release something.”
Not only is the standard higher, but the videos are often longer with people more willing to watch YouTube on TV, and thanks to tools like multi-language audio, videos [FastGoodCuisine content is filmed in French] and brand partnerships can now reach global audiences.
Work with creators and we can help take your brand to new levels
Clear communication is king
“Trying to make people smile, that’s my mission.” This is Federico. He has been creating content across a number of different YouTube channels for more than 10 years, but it was Panda Boi, launched in 2020 while at home with roommates, which really took off. His YouTube Shorts channel has more than 37.9 million subscribers.
Within six months, he began receiving emails from brands about potential collaborations. Federico notes that at first it was not paid work, but before long enough offers for branded content partnerships were flooding his inbox that he was able to charge and be more selective.
Federico is very strict with who he works with. Panda Boi is a family friendly channel so certain products are simply off the table, regardless of budget. He explains: “We really care about that. We want to work with brands that connect with our philosophy.”
Tools such as YouTube’s recently launched BrandConnect help brands discover — and match with — relevant creators. BrandConnect is a self-service platform that connects creators with opportunities for branded content campaigns. Brands can use the platform to measure their campaigns and promote branded content videos via ads.
But once a "good fit" partnership has been established, both parties need to communicate effectively and clearly from the outset with a more personal approach. He recalls one experience: “A brand emailed 100 different creators all on one single thread. With all the replies from different creators it got very confusing to figure out who you were speaking to.”
Individualised requests let the creator know the offer is genuine and will allow them to focus on making the best content for the job, which is where Federico thinks they shine. “Believe in what the creator is doing,” he says. “Consider it as an investment, rather than a cost.”
Typically the creator will take a brief and turn that into a script, weaving in the brand name at timely points, before reviewing with the partner and then filming and editing.
The Panda Boi channel used to run content with the brand more prominent. “But 90% of the time the results weren’t as good.” Instead, the better performing content tends to be natural. Federico recalls a branded video with a game called the Rise of Kingdom. The video format followed a similar format that the PandaBoi channel was already running.
The entire video was about the game, encouraging viewers to guess which character Federico was talking about. “It didn’t feel like branded content; it didn’t feel forced,” he says.
Federico explains that there is much more that goes into content creation than “recording for 20 seconds on your phone”. From understanding the brand and audience, to writing a script and editing a video that will resonate with both. “Work with creators and we can help take your brand to new levels,” he concludes.
