Ben Relles went from ad agency to YouTube pioneer, launching the viral Obama Girl video on Barely Political and creating The Key of Awesome, whose Kesha parody hit nearly 100 million views. After YouTube acquired his company in 2011, he now helps creators build full-time careers through original programming and collaborations.
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Hey, this is Ben Relles and you're watching Comedy Matters TV.
So I'm on St. Catherine Street in the middle of the insanity of the Just for Laughs Festival, and as I told you, everyone in the comedy world is here. So who do we run into but Ben Relles. How are you, Ben?
I'm good, good to see you, man.
It's good to see you too, as always. I saw your panel this afternoon, it was fantastic. Big turnout. Really, really, really, really fun. It was a panel on YouTubers.
That's right.
Right?
Myself, Shane Dawson, Grace from Daily Grace, and Bernie Burns from— well, he was the moderator. And yeah, it was a cool panel. It was basically, is YouTube comedy the future of comedy? I think that was something like that.
And I think the answer is that it is, right?
It's part of it. It's definitely part of it, yeah.
Now, tell for anybody who might not know, about your history. You started Barely Political, is that correct? Was that the first thing that you started?
Right, yes, I started the YouTube channel Barely Political with a video about Obama Girls. Quickly after that, started doing comedy about other things, you know, pop culture and movies and everything else.
But what was your background before you did that? What led you to do Obama Girls?
Well, you know, it's funny, I was working at an ad agency actually, and while I was at the ad agency, we were kind of looking at all the different things that people were using to get their messages out there. And YouTube to me was the most fascinating, that all of a sudden you had all these people who could create something in a weekend and have millions of people see it, and I wanted to try it myself. So I did a couple of videos, and that Obama Girl one really took off. And shortly thereafter, a company called Next New Networks actually brought me in, bought Barely Political, and I ended up there kind of working on Barely Political, but also building out channels for other creators as well.
Now, is that where you did the work with Mark Douglas? The parodies? The song parodies?
Yeah, yeah, right. So—
It was for Next New Networks?
Right. So Barely Political, from 2007 to 2008, did a lot of political comedy. Mark Douglas came on around the middle of, I would say, 2008, end of 2007. And he's a comedian, a writer. He's the star of our biggest show called The Key of Awesome.
He's a genius, that guy.
Really funny. Really funny, yeah. And so he's become the face and the star of the channel in a lot of ways.
The Key of Awesome. And I should clarify, that's how I first met Ben, was when I did a film with Lauren Francesca, who does a lot of stuff for you guys, as Lady Gaga.
Correct.
And I did a thing called Bésame Mucho, the hot Latin chick who runs a kissing school in your office. He was kind enough to give us his office to shoot the film, which is very cool. But your films get millions of hits. What's the highest number that you've had?
We did a Kesha parody that I think's at 97 million views. It's gonna hit, you know, 100 million at some point in the next couple of weeks. And that whole show, The Key of Awesome, has done about 800 million of the 1.5 billion views on the Barely Political channel. But now, actually, I work at YouTube. So, Next New Networks and Barely Political became part of YouTube in March 2011. So I spend most of my time now working on other kind of YouTube initiatives. I still spend some time on Barely Political, but really working more on kind of the YouTube projects.
That's funny, because this particular interview is going to wind up on YouTube on my Comedy Matters TV channel. We only have a couple hundred thousand hits, but we're working on it because I have a lot of interviews. So this is going to be a good one. Yes. And I'll make sure to send it to you.
Send it on over. The circle of YouTube. Thanks.
What's next for you on the horizon? What do you have coming up?
I got 2 weeks off coming up, so that's exciting. Coming up projects, you know, we're doing a lot with some of the new channels that were part of the original programming that YouTube— excuse me— funded. So like, I'm working with Bedrock. It has a comedy channel, Official Comedy. Broadway Video has a channel, Above Average. Amy Poehler has a channel called Smart Girls. And then stuff outside of comedy too, a lot of the channels channels that just got off the ground in the last few months. We're spending, you know, time thinking about those guys, and then we're also still looking at ways to kind of turn the average YouTube creator into a full-time creator, turning the full-time creators into bigger stars. Anything we can do to help YouTube creators in general.
That's great. Well, listen, it was so good to see you, and thanks so much for coming on with us on Comedy Matters TV.
