Dec 8 (Reuters) – Superstar video messaging service Cameo mentioned Thursday it has partnered with Candle Media to launch a brand new characteristic aimed on the playground set — Cameo Youngsters.
The service will supply customized birthday and vacation video greetings from animated youngsters’s characters, together with common figures from Candle Media’s Moonbug Leisure’s franchises “Blippi” and “CoComelon.”
Personalised messages for kids develop the potential marketplace for Cameo, which launched 5 years in the past and permits athletes, celebrities and musicians to promote customized movies to their followers. Amongst these presently featured on the service are U.S. Girls’s soccer participant Mia Hamm, “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel”‘s Alex Borstein and nation singer Lee Brice.
“Regardless that Cameo is known for you sending a buddy a ‘Actual Housewives’ video, our core customers have children,” mentioned Steven Galanis, Cameo’s chief government and co-founder, noting that 73% of its clients are over the age of 29. “This lastly provides us a method to assist them create these … experiences they’ve already seen with Cameo however for the youngsters of their lives.”
The Candle Media partnership faucets into that viewers, with individualized messages from characters together with the title character from the preschool animated collection “Blippi Wonders,” and J.J., Cody, CeCe and Nina from the kids’s present “CoComelon.”
Cameo surged in reputation in the course of the pandemic, giving performers a inventive and monetary outlet as productions and live shows shut down. In March 2021, its dad or mum firm, Baron App Inc, accomplished a $100 million funding spherical that valued the service at greater than $1 billion.
Discussions started greater than a 12 months in the past at The Polo Lounge on the Beverly Hills Resort, the place Candle Media co-chief executives Kevin Mayer and Tom Staggs — two veteran executives of Walt Disney Co (DIS.N) — talked with Galanis about their imaginative and prescient for constructing a digital media firm and discovering new methods to monetize content material.
Cameo had experimented with providing youngsters’s content material a couple of 12 months in the past, working with Mattel Inc’s (MAT.O) ‘Thomas the Tank Engine,’ however its partnership with Candle Media helped elevate the expertise, Galanis mentioned.
Blackstone-backed Candle Media spent months determining tips on how to use its animated characters to ship customized video at scale. It introduced voice actors right into a studio for 2 separate recording classes, which had been used to coach a man-made intelligence program to ship individualized messages.
“That is an completely distinctive use case,” mentioned Mayer. “There isn’t something prefer it on the planet. And it’s a use case we expect will serve and delight our audiences.”
Additionally accessible at launch are Thomas the Tank Engine, True from Netflix Inc’s (NFLX.O) “True and the Rainbow Kingdom,” and an animated Santa Claus. Costs for movies begin at $25.
Reporting by Daybreak Chmielewski in Los Angeles; enhancing by Diane Craft
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