The Wrap

Objective

To reimagine The Wrap's video strategy—monetize, elevate, and transform its video content, to compete with some of the most well-known publishers in entertainment.

Challenge

The Wrap is billed as the 4th biggest trade magazine in Hollywood. Basically, in regards to revenue, The Wrap sits behind The Hollywood Reporter, Deadline, and Variety. On the flip side, The Wrap is independently owned, something the other big three can't say about their conglomerates.

Inherently, The Wrap did not have the resources to compete with the bigger trades, but it did have the appetite to try something new and some of the same relationships to lean on.  

I was hired as the Director of Video to bring its brand voice to life and find new sources of revenue.

What we did

1. Created brand consistency and developed new source of revenue by developing celebrity-driven franchises (celebrities promoted through their social channels while The Wrap upsold its direct  deals with video)

2. Developed a content calendar that aligned our seasonal and tentpole events with annual revenue and "awareness" (views/impressions) goals

3. Signed new contracts with native video players to distribute our native video through The Wrap's website, controlling the CPM we could sell against for direct sold deals

4. Licensed our celebrity-driven content to other demand publishers (e.g. Video Elephant) as contextual content to sell against

Conclusion

The Wrap redefined its video strategy, seeing a six-figure increase in ad-revenue from video alone, while dramatically increasing the visibility of its content through new O&O placements and through licensing deals.