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| Yacine Kouhen and Charly Jourdan shared their tips at the latest Sustainability Communications Lunch |
Our latest Sustainability
Communications Lunch guests, Eurobubble writer Yacine Kouhen and director
Charlélie (Charly) Jourdan, have become something of a phenomenon over the past
year - they’re the creators of the hugely popular Eurobubble series which
made its debut earlier this year and has since gained popularity by depicting
the rise of the Brussels-based Eurocrat.
With its slick title
sequence and deadpan acting, it’s easy to believe that the series required
months to shoot and a healthy dose of media relations, funding and
sponsorship. The reality, in fact,
is quite different: the entire series was shot in eight weekends with a budget
of €6,000. Yacine and Charly are
adamant that with some creativity and an open mind, anything is possible. Here are 5 of their top tips.
1/ Develop your idea
Eurobubble started off
as a blog, written by
Yacine during a stint as a policy officer and fuelled by his awareness that European
institutions in Brussels were full of people that fit the same profile: over-educated,
multilingual high-achievers with a degree in politics or law and experience
travelling abroad. When
considering how to make the blog into a series, Yacine admits that he “didn’t
even know how to hold a video camera, much less operate one” but director
Charly did, and so began their collaboration. Yacine and Charly both maintain that that the key to their
success was having a great idea and the dedication to figure out the details
along the way rather than putting obstacles in their path.
2/ Find experts for free through crowdsourcing
Eurobubble was a reality
made possible by collaborative exchange.
“We had no money, but we put the word out that we wanted to do something
and all of a sudden we had people volunteering their time to work with us,”
says Yacine. The technical term
for this is crowdsourcing, which involves bringing together volunteers with
particular talents in order to achieve a bigger goal. It was through crowdsourcing that Yacine and Charly managed
to shoot the entire Eurobubble series in only 8 weekends, thanks to the
contributions of an army of talented people who were happy to give up their
time to help. “It was a great
lesson for us in the power of volunteering,” says Charly.
3/ Get noticed by using social media
The key to any
successful video project is to experiment and see which social media tools work
best depending on the goal. The
cornerstone of Yacine and Charly’s success has been their extensive use of
social media. YouTube played a
huge role in reaching audiences - videos on the Eurobubble
YouTube channel have had over 150,000 views. While Eurobubble’s Twitter account (@TheEurobubble) has a
healthy number of followers, it was Facebook that stands out as a great
communications tool. In addition
to amassing volunteers for Eurobubble, a recent Facebook call for translators
for their new Alternative
European Elections campaign drew over 100 people and the video was
translated into 12 languages in less than an hour. Watch the evolution of the collaborative translation process
here.
4/ Get funding through crowdfunding initiatives
Although Yacine and
Charly didn’t start with an abundance of cash or sponsors, they didn’t let this
hamper their progress. Instead,
they tried crowdfunding, an increasingly popular method of funding projects by
gathering small contributions from many funders. Yacine and Charly raised €6,000 from around 50 contributors
which helped them get the project up and running. Crowdfunding initiatives such as Ulele, Kickstarter,
Indiegogo, Rockethub and GoFundMe are some of the most popular options
right now.
5/ Expand your network
Tying in with
collaborative exchange, Yacine and Charly regularly return the favour by
advising others on creative projects, which has helped them build a supportive
network. Having witnessed the
power of the ‘virtuous circle’, Charly believes that money is worth next to
nothing in comparison to the energy that people can bring. He maintains that great things come
from keeping a “we’re going to do this, and it’s going to be awesome”
attitude. For Charly and Yacine,
this attitude has led to more recent support and sponsorship from some big
names, including Alliance Française, Thon Hotels and Expats in Brussels.
Despite Eurobubble’s
success, Charly and Yacine aren’t resting on their laurels and are already
looking forward to new projects.
Their next project involves tapping into the potential of crowdsourcing
once again, this time by inviting participants to send comment on rough storylines. Once enough ideas and suggestions have
been compiled, they’ll start on a new series. “We’re basically saying ‘we want to do something – do you
want to join us?’” says Charly. If
you’re interested, see how you can get
involved.
Blog by Hayley Coristine, Communications Assistant
at Brussels-based sustainability communications and PR agency Sustainability Consult
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