Blippi’s secrets for turning a one-man YouTube show into an empire
Kait Richmond is a writer, producer and contributor to the M.T. Deco Blog
Whether you know the name Blippi is very dependent on whether you have young kids. If you don’t, you’re probably thinking: “WTF is a Blippi?” If you do, you might wince at the thought of consuming more Blippi content than you already do.
Although Blippi is a show for toddlers, we can all learn from how creator Stevin John used digital strategy to take this from a one-man show made in his garage to a multiverse worth millions.
Blippi is, first and foremost, an educational YouTube show for children. In his signature blue and orange outfit, Blippi takes his viewers on adventures all over the world and teaches them about everything from making ice cream to different jobs and professions. It’s all explained just for the toddler audience, with tons of giggles and earworm songs throughout.
The YouTube channel is what started it all, and at the time of publishing this story, it’s nearing 15 billion total views. That channel is the anchor - and the launch pad - for an entire empire. Since starting in 2014, Blippi has expanded to multiple streaming services and live shows; sells toys, clothing and costumes; and started a show with a new character, Meekah. There have also been some big collaborations, including with the Olympics and, more recently, fellow kids entertainer Ms. Rachel. A movie is coming soon to theaters, too.
None of this success is by accident. From the very beginning, Stevin took this idea seriously, put in the work and was very intentional in his choices.
In 2013, Stevin was an Air Force veteran living in Los Angeles and holding down multiple jobs, primarily in video production and online marketing. He made the decision to move home to Washington state, and started spending a lot of time with his 2-year-old nephew, who was YouTube-obsessed but not watching content that actually taught him anything. Like all great entrepreneurs, Stevin saw a gap in the market and decided he would create something to fill it.
When he had the idea, he went into pre-production on the character. Mashable interviewed Stevin in 2018 and explained his process: “He started with the name. Pulling from his memory of a middle school lesson that kids learn from the front of the mouth to speak, he drafted 700 or 800 words that were pronounced from the front of the mouth, were short, had repeating letters, and sounded happy. After that came domain name, copyright, and trademark searches.”
From there, Stevin developed Blippi’s look, telling Mashable he selected blue because it’s “trustworthy” and orange because it’s “fun and creative.” He also considered green, but was playing the long game even then: “...I understood that in the future I was probably going to shoot green screen with a large company, and I didn’t want to be the burden to have them paint it blue. I ruled it out.”
The Blippi YouTube channel was started in January of 2014 and reached one million views in one year. Stevin was able to drop his side hustles to focus on Blippi full-time.
His background in video production made it easy for him to make the show for cheap, but with a certain level of quality. What’s really key, though, is his experience in online marketing. He spoke about this in-depth in a 2019 podcast with K-Swiss, a company he was collaborating with on a Blippi shoe.
Stevin’s method resonates because it’s beyond the fundamental rule to have quality content. What’s the point if no one will see it? Here’s what he did:
Lean in to the algorithm of your chosen platform: Stevin was starting on YouTube, where SEO is king. He was a master at it because of his past in online marketing, and in the conversation with the K-Swiss guys, credits a lot of his early audience-building to good SEO. It’s clearly something that the Blippi team still leans into today, because all of their video titles follow the format of “title + descriptive keywords”, such as, “Blippi's Science Slime Challenge! 1 Hour of Blippi Episodes for Kids”
This means something different for each platform and requires keeping up with what each one is telling creators it’s prioritizing - but it pays off.
Know your target audience and take their feedback: Blippi’s target audience is 2-6 years old, but Stevin knew he also needed to think of their parents because they had to tolerate Blippi as much as their kids enjoyed it. He says he spent Blippi’s first year taking parent feedback and infusing it into the character.
There’s no shame in the branding game: One noticeable trademark of Blippi’s is that he ends videos by spelling his name so that his young fans will know how to find him. It’s a brilliant tactic, as the Mashable writer pointed out: “My daughter can now spell ‘Mom,”’ ‘Dad,’ ‘love,’ and ‘Blippi.’” That, plus YouTube autoplay, really helps when you have such a young audience.
Although Blippi has really exploded since the pandemic, the show had a solid foundation before that. Stevin told the K-Swiss hosts during their 2019 interview that the channel was racking up 400 million views per year across platforms. So it’s no surprise that, a year later, Blippi found even more success when we were all forced to stay home and parents were in desperate need of quality children's programming.
That time was the beginning of the Blippi empire as we know it today. In 2020, Moonbug Entertainment acquired both Blippi and CoComelon, another kids entertainment juggernaut. Then, in 2021, Candle Media bought Moonbug for $3 billion.
At the same time, Stevin was enjoying what every entrepreneur dreams of - profound success that was positively impacting people’s lives. At the end of 2020, Stevin made Forbes’ list of the highest paid YouTubers, earning $17 million with 8.2 billion views and 27.4 million subscribers.
Today, Blippi is much more than just Stevin, but he’s still very much involved. He and his wife welcomed their first child in 2022, and to prepare, his wife told Parents that he “filmed three week-long trips before taking his time off for paternity leave.”
"My nephew Hunter was the first inspiration for making Blippi videos when he was a toddler," Stevin said in the same interview. "He's 11 now, so he's past the Blippi age. It was really rewarding making videos for him and kids like him when he was younger. I think having my own child in the Blippi age will make it really special and even more exciting."
Given the amount of success that Stevin has enjoyed as Blippi, as well as the fact that he’s a dad, most people would understand him wanting some help. The Blippi team brought in Clayton Grimm to play Blippi in live shows, and he has been stepping in to the show itself on a more regular basis. Clayton’s appearances became somewhat controversial, with parents mad they were paying for the Blippi experience, and not getting the “real” Blippi. It’s unclear whether Blippi’s toddler audience notices or cares.
That’s not the only controversy Stevin has encountered during Blippi, and the other is much more damaging - or so it would have seemed. Buzzfeed News revealed in 2019 that a pre-Blippi Stevin had created a video in response to 2013’s viral “Harlem Shake” meme. Trying to make a go at comedy, the video shows Stevin defecating on a friend. Not exactly the kind of content parents want associated with the person their kids are obsessed with.
“At the time, I thought this sort of thing was funny, but really it was stupid and tasteless, and I regret having ever done it,” Stevin said in a statement to BuzzFeed. “I’ve grown up a lot since then, and I trust people will see me as the person I am now, not the idiot I was back then.”
Stevin seems to have recovered from that incident, although you’ll still see people mentioning it in comments and on Reddit. It may seem surprising that cancel culture didn’t take him down, which means the only thing more powerful than angry parents are angry kids who cannot be apart from their beloved Blippi.
The future of Blippi is bright. Moonbug has big plans for the brand. The company announced that in addition to an added focus on Meekah and some new toys, Blippi will also enter the audio space with a 20-episode podcast series and a new Moonbug channel on SiriusXM. The team also continues to produce in-person events, launching “Blippi in My Classroom,” where Blippi will join a teacher in their classroom for a day.
We all have something to learn from Blippi, and we’ll continue to watch how Moonbug grows the brand to stand out in a crowded space. What’s clear is that Stevin had the passion and determination to make it work, and used his skills in marketing and production to turn his vision into a reality. With all the opportunities to learn these skills and more online, there’s no reason any of us can’t take a page from his book and create something special.