THE 14TH ANNUAL SHORTY AWARDS

The Shorty Awards honor the best of social media and digital. View this season's finalists!

Hello Kitty and Friends YouTube Channel

Entered in YouTube Presence

Objective

Hello Kitty and her friends are on a mission to spread friendship, kindness, and inclusivity across the world… and on YouTube with the Hello Kitty and Friends YouTube channel!

The channel had grown steadily with an audience in North America since 2019 and in 2024 we saw the opportunity to grow, bringing fans across the world into the channel more than ever before. 

Our goals on YouTube were ambitious: increase subscriber growth on the channel by 1.2 Million in nine months reaching 3 Million subscribers across our target regions (North America, UK, Spain, Italy, France and Germany). 

Strategy

We took an audience-first approach to growing the Hello Kitty and Friends channel, knowing that our best advocates are the fans we already have. We began by reviewing past performance and metrics across our channel to understand what our fans were the most interested in, what content earned the most subscribers, what Sanrio characters were the most popular, and what changes we could make that would quickly grow the channel.  

We discovered the following opportunities to increase growth: 

All of these changes helped us spread smiles and joy to new and existing audiences in the US and abroad because as Hello Kitty says “You can never have too many friends.” 

Results

We have not only met but exceeded our objectives. With our multifaceted approach, we met the 3 Million subscriber goal in December 2024 - THREE months early! And it didn’t stop there. We are continuing to build our fan base with 3.24 million subscribers currently.  

We were also able to grow subscribers in our target European markets (UK, Germany, Italy, France, and Spain) by 105k subscribers through a mix of engaging organic content and a paid subscriber campaign targeting Hello Kitty using both in-language and non-verbal content.  

In addition to our subscriber goal, we also grew views by 68% from 2023 to 245 million views in 2024, had 6.2M engagements and a 113% increase in watch time compared to 2023.  

The Hello Kitty and Friends channel continues to grow, making friends around the globe by spreading smiles, friendship, and kindness to new and old friends alike.  

Media

Video for Hello Kitty and Friends YouTube Channel

Entrant Company / Organization Name

Golin, Sanrio, Inc.

Link

Entry Credits