In our Agency Influencer Marketing Predictions for 2021, we discussed the concept of influencer houses increasing in popularity.
What is a content house?
In simple terms, a content house, also referred to as a creator house or influencer house, are physical spaces (homes) for creators from YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok to collaborate. These homes will often feature a pool, nice bathrooms, great lighting, and very large gardens.
The concept of a content house first came to fruition in 2014 when members of an early YouTube collaboration channel, Our Second Life, moved into a home where they could all work together, which they called the 02L Mansion. However, the recent increase in the popularity of TikTok has significantly raised the demand for content houses, especially over the past year.
What happens in a content house?
One of the fundamental benefits of a creator/content house is that members can share their followers with one another. Tagging one another in their content means that they can reach each others audience, allowing a quick boost to the platforms of the individuals. The creators can also benefit from the help from one another in creating their content. Members of content houses are all working within the same industry, so they can share their knowledge on how to keep their content consistent and relevant with their ‘colleagues’, or housemates.
The large budgets surrounding creator houses such as the ‘Hype House’, ‘Icon House’ and ‘Sway House’ certainly encourage audience engagement. UK-based content house, the ‘Wave House’ reportedly has a worth of £5,000,000, as well as the funds to post content featuring the house members engaging in activities such as helicopter rides, building a full-sized skate park in the garden as well as a full-sized ice rink.
Even musician and beauty mogul Rihanna has created a content house. The house, based in Los Angeles and known as Fenty Beauty, was set up by Rihanna to promote her beauty products, although she took the decision to close it in late March 2020.
How do content houses benefit brands?
‘Byte House’ was the first content house to be launched in the UK, following in the footsteps of the US Hype House which is home to influencers such as Lil Huddy, Charli D’Amelio, and Addison Rae, all of whom have millions of followers on their social media pages. The Byte House is headed by Fanbytes, a leading influencer marketing agency that works towards getting brands trending on social media, focusing on a GenZ audience and client base.
The premise is that an agency will rent a luxury property for their content creators to live in free of charge, on the promise that they hit a quota with the content they’re producing. CEO of Fanbytes, Timothy Armoo believes that TikTok has become the medium for finding the next generation of presenters and entertainers, with the potential of heading towards future careers in television and wider media.
When a brand chooses to take up a sponsorship with a content house, if the house has five members, for example, there is the potential that the brand or its product will reach five times the audience than they would when working on a sponsorship deal with just one influencer.
With their social reach, content houses are deserving of the attention of marketers looking to leverage the presence of their brands on social media. For brands, getting to know the most popular content houses and engaging with their content could be a valuable, and speedy, way of reaching a huge audience.
