Cameo wants the kids entertainment industry to know that it’s open for business as it aims to become a hub for brands and creators looking to engage young fans.

Since launching in 2017, the online platform has carved out a solid market niche for itself as a service that lets consumers buy short, personalized video messages from celebrities running the gamut from skateboarding legend Tony Hawk to OG rapper Snoop Dogg.

Its business really took off during the pandemic, when stuck-at-home consumers flocked in droves to Cameo as a way to reach out and connect with friends and family. Today, the platform has a roster of 50,000- plus personalities, who have delivered more than four million Cameos and live calls to their fans around the world.

But the reach of these messages is exponentially bigger than their sum total, says Cameo president Arthur Leopold, given that 85% of them are shared on social media or otherwise distributed to friends by their recipients.

A number of TikTok celebs, voice actors and stars with kid appeal are longtime residents on the platform, including Scott Innes (the voice of Scooby-Doo) and Ernie Sabella (who voiced Pumba in The Lion King).But kids entertainment brands were noticeably absent until more recently.

The platform added popular YouTuber Blippi in 2019, and then cut a deal with Universal to offer messages from The Boss Baby in October 2021. The success of those launches has piqued the company’s interest. “We want to partner with more studios and IP holders,” says Leopold. “Kids content is a big opportunity for us.”

The company is primed for growth right now after securing US$100 million in funding this past March. And breaking into more niches and fandoms is high on its priority list, according to Leopold. Cameo is also introducing new features that will give kids a wider variety of options for connecting with the characters they love, such as live events with 10- to 15-minute streaming experiences and live video calls.

Outside of mascots at live events, there aren’t really many opportunities in the market for personalized interactions, explains Leopold. “On Cameo, brands and characters can say something directly to kids, and that kind of engaging experience can turn a child into a fan for life.”

This potential for building long-lasting fan relationships is a big reason why Toronto’s Guru Studio chose to bring its flagship animated series True and the Rainbow Kingdom onto the Cameo platform in June.

Guru had already been receiving requests from parents wanting True to speak to their kids in personal videos. But at the time, there weren’t many kids brands on Cameo, and animated characters were even rarer (with the exception of a few big brands such as Mattel’s Thomas & Friends).

The studio saw an opportunity to meet an existing demand while also building a new type of consumer product that could mark key milestones in the lives of kids, says VP of marketing Daniel Rattner.

True is one of the first animated characters to be featured on Cameo, where families can order short videos in which the namesake character wishes kids happy birthday, celebrates their milestones (like school graduations), or just says hello. The videos are about a minute long, and Guru charges US$25 for each one (with Cameo taking a standard 25% on all transactions).

The work of animating and customizing the videos would have been too costly and time-consuming for the studio to handle solo, so it turned to Texas-based software developer Aquifer Motion. Aquifer has built a platform that uses 3D animation, AI and AR to let producers create videos for any platform—a service that’s perfect for Cameo.

Live performers can record themselves reading the customized message, and then Aquifer’s tech will automatically generate a video, complete with True’s facial animation, body movements and voice.

Guru provided Aquifer with artwork and oversaw the animation featured in the video messages to ensure that it was faithful to the show. The studio also built a simple pipeline for scripting, approvals and animation to make sure turnaround would keep up with demand. Using this process, Guru is typically able to deliver a video message in three days.

The response from kids and families has been positive, and when kids share their reactions to the videos on social media, Guru can see in real time what works and what they love most about the brand, says Rattner. “Personalized video is an exciting opportunity to move beyond the traditional experiences of consumer products and TV,” he says. “It offers something unique, personal and intimate.”

Cameo is also proving to be a timely replacement for live events, adds Steve Watts, a YouTuber whose channel, Steve and Maggie, has amassed 5.4 million subscribers. Its namesake preschool show features Watts and a bird puppet singing songs, telling bedtime stories and playing games.

COVID-19 put all live performances featuring Steve and Maggie on the shelf, and those opportunities still haven’t returned to pre-pandemic levels. But since joining Cameo in 2020, Watts has been able to connect with his fans around the world through live calls and personalized videos.

Cameo helped YouTuber Steve Watts stay connected with fans when the pandemic forced the cancellation of live events.

As he looks to expand his brand beyond YouTube, Watts can also highlight his success on Cameo in meetings and negotiations with potential broadcast and distribution partners. His 250-plus Steve and Maggie videos on the platform, along with the positive reviews they’ve generated from happy customers, help him demonstrate the IP’s popularity and potential for engagement.

Watts has also discovered some simple strategies for success on Cameo, such as increasing the price for a video if the demand reaches a certain level, or setting up windows in the live experience function where he can meet with 20 to 30 fans one right after the other.

“There were more and more requests coming in for me to record messages, and Cameo came on my radar at the right time,” says Watts. “With a click, I can get thrown into someone’s living room and talk directly to fans.”

Kids yoga sensation Jaime Amor—whose YouTube channel Cosmic Kids Yoga has 1.3 million subscribers—says Cameo helps her interact with her audience in a way that isn’t possible otherwise. On YouTube, Amor’s ability to converse one on one with her viewers is restricted because comments aren’t enabled on videos for kids.

During the pandemic, she was flooded with emails from families asking her to make personalized shout-out videos to wish kids happy birthday or give them a pep-talk, and she was fulfilling these requests herself.

Going it alone was time-consuming and left too much room for errors—Amor had to make notes about what families wanted her to say, record the videos and then email them out directly to the recipients. Managing this “side business” with her regular content production schedule quickly became overwhelming.

Amor joined Cameo at the start of 2022, seeing it as a way to make the process quicker and easier. Now, she simply opens each request from a notification that comes through on her cell phone, which activates her camera and a teleprompter pre-loaded with the message details. She records the greeting on video and sends it off right away.

She can also re-record as needed, and the app keeps her up to date on deadlines so she doesn’t miss a kid’s birthday. The app also handles payment and video delivery, and lets Amor send a quick text message through its chat function to thank the person who made the request. So far, she has only made around 10 videos this way, but she hasn’t started marketing the fact that she’s on the platform yet (wanting to test the waters first).

Despite taking it slowly, Amor says Cameo is already opening up other opportunities beyond one-on-one personal videos. For example, she has received several requests from teachers who want her to give encouraging pep-talks to their classes to get kids excited about exercise and physical activity. She sees this group approach as a new way to reach larger audiences, while still making something special and personalized.

She adds that the future of personalized videos for kids looks bright. “It’s a wonderful connection that’s super-personal. Kids can participate in what you’re creating when they send in what they want to see, and that makes the content mean so much more to them. And it builds their engagement with the final product.”

This story originally appeared in the October/November 2022 edition of Kidscreen magazine.