Cameo Kids is a new feature that will be launched on the Cameo Kids, a video messaging service that is partnered with Candle Media.
Personalized messages for children expand the potential market for Cameo, which launched five years ago and allows athletes, celebrities and musicians to sell personalized videos to their fans. Among those currently featured on the service are the U.S. women's soccer player Mia Hamm, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel's Alex Borstein and Country Singer Lee Brice.
Even though Cameo is famous for sending a friend a 'Real Housewives' video, our core users have kids, Steven Galanis, Cameo's chief executive and co-founder, said 73 per cent of its customers are over the age of 29. This gives them a way to help them create the experiences they have already seen with Cameo, but for the kids in their lives. The Candle Media partnership taps into the audience with individualized messages from characters such as the title character from the preschool animated series Blippi Wonders, J.J. Cody, CeCe and Nina from the children's show CoComelon. Cameo gained popularity during the flu, giving performers a creative and financial outlet as productions and concerts shut down. In March 2021, Baron App Inc., its parent company, completed a $100 million funding round that valued the service at more than $1 billion.
The discussions began more than a year ago at The Polo Lounge at Beverly Hills Hotel, where Candle Media co-chief executives Kevin Mayer and Tom Staggs - two veteran executives of Walt Disney Co - talked about their vision for building a digital media company and finding new ways to monetize content.
Cameo had experimented with offering children's content about a year ago, working with Mattel Inc's 'ThomasThomas the Tank Engine, but its partnership with Candle Media helped elevate the experience, Galanis said.
Blackstone-backed Candle Media spent months figuring out how to deliver personalized video at scale. It brought voice actors into a studio for two separate recording sessions that were used to train an artificial intelligence program to deliver personalized messages.
Mayer said that this is an utterly unique use case. There isn't anything like it in the world. It is a use case we think will delight our audience. Also available at launch are Thomas the Tank Engine, True from Netflix Inc's True and the Rainbow Kingdom, and an animated Santa Claus. Prices for videos start at $25.