If you've been on YouTube in the past five years (and I'm going to assume you have), you've probably stumbled across those videos that seem to break every norm.
You know, the ones with titles like, '1 Liberal Teen vs 20 Trump Supporters,' or 'Is Being Fat a Choice? Fit women vs Fat Women.'
Not your everyday headlines, huh?
They're raw, unscripted (or at least appear to be), and often extremely uncomfortable.
Think of Jubilee as a social experiment hub and a masterclass in how to build a brand with a soul, all wrapped into one deliciously disruptive media company. It's something we marketers have been trying to crack forever.
So, what can we learn from such a meteoric rise? And how do we apply it to our own strategies?
In 2016, when social media was getting murky with politics and toxicity, Jubilee bet on a wild card: empathy.
They noticed no content was addressing the issues at hand.
So, instead of churning out more safe, polished content, Jubilee rolled out social experiments on hot-button issues-'Rich vs. Poor,' 'Black vs. White,' and 'Blind race-guessing,' among others, putting stereotypes, disagreements and similarities on full display.
The result? Every video ended up with over 2 million views a pop.
This is what happens when a brand fully rejects the notion of playing it safe and leans into those topics no one dares to touch.
Audiences respond to stories that feel real, unfiltered, and a little risky. People are craving authenticity more than ever, and Jubilee proved there's an appetite for content that stirs the pot.
Jubilee shows us that if you take a stand and tell stories that matter, you'll likely watch your brand's engagement go from meh to meaningful.
So let's take a look at their playbook to see what steps they took to get such astronomical results.
Jubilee's ideation process was anything but standard.
Imagine your boss is like 'right, I'm locking the entire team in a room for 24 hours and until you come up with 800 show ideas!'
And then actually doing that.
No, really, the Jubilee team literally held a 24-hour brainstorm and came out of it with hundreds of show ideas. And, within the next 48 hours, they built MVPs, tested each concept, and scrapped anything that didn't resonate.
Sure, it's super intense. And I'm sure there were multiple eye rolls at the beginning. But that's how Jubilee developed its most successful formats.
Jubilee's rapid ideation reminds us that success isn't always found in careful planning. Sometimes, it's in the willingness to try everything until you find the magic.
This is also something I learnt at university. My lecturers would make us come up with 50 ideas, choose 5, can the rest, then expand those 5 into 50 again.
Marketers can take note: test, learn, kill what doesn't work, and scale what does. This iterative approach is gold, especially in the fast-paced digital world.
Jubilee carefully designed their formats to be highly addictive.
The secret sauce? Pique extreme curiosity, create high emotional stakes, and use strong pay-offs that keep viewers hooked. Their shows are almost like structured experiences.
And it was that structure that built a loyal audience and sent their viewership into the billions.
A strong format can be done and done again. Meaning Jubilee could continue iterating on the topic while still giving the audience the structure they loved.
To take a page out of Jubilee's book, think of creating your content in a similar format. Set up a hook (curiosity), raise the stakes (emotional investment), and finish with a pay-off (that ah-ha moment).
These elements make people stick around, so design your content to lead them from curiosity to payoff every time.
The founder's ambition to build a 'Disney of Empathy' is more than a cute phrase; it's a declaration.
Jubilee wanted to do more than make videos, they wanted to redefine media's role in connecting people. And they're not stopping at YouTube; they're diving into TV, film, and live events.
