A YouTube star called Fred
Have you heard of Fred? Chances are you will soon as he has become a YouTube sensation, racking up 500,000 subscribers to his channel, which is pretty good for “a six-year-old with anger management issues” who already has movie studios knocking on his door.
Fred is the invention of a 15-year-old Nebraskan kid called Lucas Cruikshank who with a video camera and the ability to speed up his voice has proved a massive hit with kids online. Put it this way he’s more popular than Jonas Brothers and Miley Cyrus…but then they are from the squeaky clean end of entertainment.
He basically talks very quickly and in a squeaky voice and pretends to be six. An episode called ‘Fred Loses His Meds’ has been viewed 9.1m times as he talks very excitedly about acting weird because, you know, he lost his meds. Anyone with kids must know it’s a total nightmare when you misplace their Zoloft, Paxil, Serafem, Retlin (tick as appropriate).
The pull that Fred has attracted has not gone unnoticed among brands who are knocking on the 15-year old’s door, (which I’m guessing must be nice in Nebraska). So far wireless messaging device brand Zipit has asked him to promote its product and Fox Walden has signed him up to promote the upcoming children’s film ‘City of Ember’, which is based on Jeanne DuPrau’s 2003 book
For Fox viral promotional work like Fred is a perfect way to get to its audience. Jeffrey Godsick, president of marketing at Fox Walden told the WSJ: “It’s important that fans aren’t hit over the head with [the marketing] in the episode. But this is better than having an ad on the Net, or having him just talk about the movie, because this is organic, and it stays in the tone we know his fans like.”
The movie was subtly mentioned in an episode last week where Fred talks about playing with a friend underground, which echoes the book. That has already been viewed 1.9m times. Next week a new episode of ‘Fred’ will air where he dreams that he is on the set of the film as a guest star. Along the way he will meet crew members and some of the stars including Tim Robbins.
“Before I even come up with the idea for the episodes, I come up with 10 titles and then figure out where each video is going to go,” Lucas said, “Doing this thing with the movie was a great way to have Fred think he’s really becoming a celebrity.”
Well someone is definitely becoming a celebrity and Cruikshank already has his own manager. You can see the appeal. It’s very funny school yard stuff and you can imagine that helium shrieking voice going down a storm.
