Online video trends have evolved to become the driving force of pop culture. But do you know who’s creating them? Much of our culture is the product of Black creativity, but that creativity does not always receive the recognition it deserves.
Flowers, presented by #YouTubeBlack is a 6-part short documentary series amplifying Black stories that showcase the outsize influence black creativity has had in the formation and evolution of modern pop culture. The series is produced by YouTube and Breakwater Studios and is dedicated to spotlighting and elevating the voices of Black Creators on the platform. These unique Black stories deserve their moment to be appreciated and celebrated for the impact they’ve had on YouTube and on culture as a whole.
Our goals included:
(1) Give Credit Where It’s Due:
Despite having an outsize influence on modern culture and being a driving force behind many viral trends, Black Creators do not receive enough credit for their creativity in the digital space.
(2) Showcase How Black Creativity Fuels YouTube:
From viral dances and storytime animation to transforming the beauty industry via a content series – there have been numerous Black Creators who have lent their creativity and passion to the YouTube platform, inspiring millions and fostering entirely new communities.
(3) Show Recognition To Creators:
Celebrate creators for their accomplishments and the work that they put into creating content.
Utilizing data and insights provided by the YouTube Culture and Trends team, this series tells the untold, true stories of the Black creators and culture behind viral internet trends. The series features creators — Adande “sWooZie” Thorne, Nyma Tang, Bianca Bonnie, Naptural85, Daym Drops, and RDCworld1 — giving them their flowers, here and now, for their significant contributions to culture as we know it. These creators have lent their creativity and passion to the YouTube platform, inspiring millions and fostering entirely new communities. The data confirms that these trends have gone global and resulted in billions of views on the YouTube platform.
Flowers debuted with the premiere episode, “How @swoozie inspired an entire genre of animation,” focusing on sWooZie’s role in creating the storytime animation format that has become integral to animation on YouTube. “How @NymaTang helped change the beauty industry” spotlights how Nyma’s series “The Darkest Shade" sparked a conversation on YouTube around the need for inclusion in beauty and transformed the entire industry. The third episode, "How ‘Chicken Noodle Soup’ paved the way for viral dance trends” features Bianca Bonnie’s contribution to the viral dance culture which became a blueprint for the dance trends that followed. “How @Naptural85 inspired a community of natural hair creators” shows how Whitney set the standard for what natural hair content creation could be and in “The Unexpected Rise of @DaymDrops and the Fast Food Review” Daymon Patterson gets his flowers for helping democratize food content by creating a channel dedicated to fast food and vernacular food reviews and filming them in the car, a now widespread format that is unmissable on social media. The final episode of the series, “How @RDCworld1 broke barriers by forging an inclusive anime community” reveals how Mark Phillips & Affiong Harris established an approach to lofi sketches that inspired future creators and put RDCworld1 at the forefront of cultural conversations in anime, video games, music, sports, and Black culture.
Beyond the series itself, the creators were celebrated with a larger campaign that included activations on YouTube’s official channel (Youtube.com/YouTube), across social, as well as creator surprise-and-delight gifting plus a full-scale screening and creator event.
(1) To extend the love to the broader YouTube Black community, each episode launched alongside a curated dedicated playlist that highlighted 40 additional creators participating in the trends featured in the stories.
(2) In order to bring the stories to the broadest audience, YouTube created three customized Shorts highlighting each of the creators and the trends they started. To engage creator’s fans on social, collab posts were created with standout clips from the series.
(3) The team hosted the Flowers Screening and After-Party to further celebrate the featured Creators with Creator awards, build community among #YouTubeBlack Creators and generate buzz for the series.
(4) Extended the love and “gave flowers” to our biggest YouTube Black Creators across the country who couldn’t make it to the IRL event via bespoke Flowers branded surprise & delight gift sets. An enclosed note encouraged creators to nurture their creativity by using the items in the set and by watching the Flowers content series. Creators were inspired to share and post about the series.
We achieved our initial three goals through the following:
Since it launched, the six-part series amplifying black creators and stories has accumulated over 13 million views and significant positive engagement from audiences and fans of the three creators.
The RDCworld1 episode organically gained over 1 million views in the first two weeks of it’s launch without any paid media.
Swoozie gained 29,206 followers during his portion of the campaign.
71 additional creators tied to the trends in the series were featured in Flowers playlists promoted on the YouTube homepage.
Featured Creator, sWooZie, commented on his video in the series, “joining YouTube is hands down one of the best decisions I've made in my life! […] If you're on the fence about creating, consider what I would've missed out on if I never started posting videos and the same could be applied to you.”
These unique stories garnered coverage in Blavity, SIlifestyle, The Futon Critic, Morty’s TV and Tomilli, thus far.
