James Dolan, a YouTube and social video specialist who has held senior positions at ITV Studios and Little Dot, has announced the launch of his new venture, Beam Digital.
Beam Digital has two main areas of activity: advising organisations, rights owners and content creators on their own digital strategies and working with selected IP and brands to build out their digital worlds, with a particular focus on YouTube.
Beam works with partners on anything from creating a clear digital strategy and setting up and managing YouTube channels to mining libraries or re-packaging content and implementing activities that find and build communities. Significantly, while digital opportunities are growing exponentially and the industry is struggling to find skilled talent to capitalise on them, Beam Digital also offers practical training sessions and workshops that enable organisations such as production companies to seamlessly migrate team members to new digital workstreams. This will help companies maintain full control of their IP and will ensure they can readily spot and maximise opportunities – becoming ‘future-fit’ and keeping core revenues in-house.
Beam Digital’s approach to business is built on more than a decade of Dolan’s experience as a YouTube/social video-first executive, half of it as Digital Channels Director in the commercial arm of ITV Studios. Here he led the digital content team, overseeing the distribution and monetisation of a 90,000-hour catalogue and managing a portfolio of 140+ digital and social channels, from single-IP brands such as Come Dine With Me, This Morning and Hell’s Kitchen, to genre and thematic channels such as Our World, Our Stories and True Lives.
Dolan has also worked as a consultant. Notable recent projects include an extended period with All3Media International, where in addition to meeting a wide-ranging strategic brief for the business, he also created a detailed social media playbook and guidelines for international format licensees and broadcasters keen to get maximum value and engagement from their adaptations of The Traitors. James has also worked with leading children’s producer Acamar Films, supporting the early launch of global pre-school hit Bing on YouTube, which involved developing several local language YouTube channels.
James Dolan, Founder of Beam Digital, says: “With the blinkers well and truly removed as to the opportunities on YouTube and social platforms, the content industry is experiencing a bit of a gold rush moment at the present – but we don’t want anyone to get burned. At Beam Digital, our focus is on creating and building long-term, sustainable activity with our partners and clients. We do this by starting with audience and data-led strategies to establish sound foundations and then make sure we identify and nurture direct relationships with engaged and loyal communities. We work hard to continuously find ways to unlock new revenues and commercial opportunities from social video and we are passionate about passing the baton on and equipping partners with the skills and knowledge to confidently navigate the social video landscape and grow their own channels.
“But our passion is more than about helping individual companies earning as much revenue as possible. With changing business models, new ways of engaging audiences and a dropping off in TV commissions, there is growing unemployment in the traditional side of the content business. If we can help stem job losses by re-training people in production companies and distributors, for example, and simultaneously help meet the growing demand for expert digital channel managers, it’s a win-win situation for individuals, companies and the evolving industry as a whole”.
