pocket.watch
Building social presence and identity from the ground up.
An Open Sandbox.
Pocket.watch is a a small but mighty digital-first studio, specializing in creating original content for YouTube, streaming, and cable alike with kids’ favorite digital superstars, like Ryan Toys Review and HobbyKidsTV.
When I started at pocket.watch, they had never had a full-time employee dedicated to social. This was my first experience being a “one man team” for social. I took all the photos, recorded all the videos, worked with my own editors, wrote the copy, managed the accounts, and analyzed my own data and insights.
Equipped with a brand new DSLR, a video rig for my iPhone, and a whole lot of trust from my superiors, I embarked on a mission to give pocket.watch a social footprint and promote our big series launches.
The Problem: Kids aren’t on social.
Most of pocket.watch’s content, both on and off YouTube, is targeting Ages 3-11. This is far too young a demo for platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and even TikTok.
The key to building a presence on social was finding only other audience with potential to invest in our properties: Parents.
“Bringing families together by inviting parents into the digital worlds their kids know and love.” This is the brand guideline I pitched to company leadership. From there, I crafted strategies and campaigns around this idea, appealing to parents’ desire to connect with their kids through their love of our creators and series.
A year later, we had over 100,000 followers across Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok with dedicated pages for our biggest franchises.
A few standout campaigns:
Make Me a HobbyKid Contest
Pocket.watch partnered with animation legend Butch Hartman to create a new cartoon based on the HobbyKids, one of our creator partners.
In order to raise awareness for parents and kids alike, we lead a contest on social for kids to post their own HobbyKid character drawings for a chance to be written into the new series. Parents jumped at the opportunity to surprise and delight their kid with not only a chance to spotlight their creativity, but to be a part of their favorite family on YouTube.
Across Instagram and Facebook, we received thousands of entries from kids all over America, and the HobbyFamily chose Kayla’s HobbyButterfly as the winner.
Ryan’s Mystery Playdate Partnerships
Global YouTube superstar Ryan ToysReview launched his first TV series with pocket.watch, Ryan’s Mystery Playdate, on Nickelodeon. Each episode features special guests in the form of “playdates.” Guests range from pirates and garbage men to Olympic athlete Adam Rippon and rock star Dave Grohl.
By prioritizing working around the preferences and idea from the “Playdates” — and working with their own PR/social teams — we were able to build the Instagram account up from 0 to 50,000 organic followers by the end of Season 1.
Finding A New Audience for HackerSpy Leaks on TikTok
One of pocket.watch’s original series, HackerSpy Leaks, played with popular YouTube-wide narratives at the time like Project Zorgo. The YouTube series focused on suspenseful plot-based events, and since the fanbase of this series was a little older, we gave the central vlogger character Rein a chance to showcase her personality and interests on TikTok.
When the viewership of long narrative-style video series started to decline on YouTube, Rein’s TikTok was continuing to grow, and pocket.watch decided to shutter the YouTube channel and transfer all HackerSpy Leaks resources to expanding her TikTok presence instead.