• by Alex Weprin , May 24, 2018

RYOT Studio, the branded content studio launched by Oath late last year, is taking its pitch to marketers, announcing two video content programs.

The Earthrise Project will consist of thousands of pieces of readymade content, from short-form videos to feature-length documentaries, spread across all of Oath’s properties over the course of a year.

The Partner Collection, meanwhile, will seek to integrate brands directly into content, giving them a stake in the process. Oath has developed a handful of ideas for series, and is open to working with brands to develop new ones.

“Our ask to brands is really to partner with us, to finalize these series, and add their touch to some of them, so that we create content that is meaningful to the audience, with a brand’s goals in mind,” Kathryn Friedrich, chief business officer for RYOT Studio, told Digital News Daily at the company's launch event Wednesday.

Oath transformed a studio space in SoHo to show media buyers and advertisers concepts it had developed. A kitchen served as the basis for “Memory’s Meals,” a celebrity cooking show, while an outdoor tableau was created for “How To Nature,” and outdoor lifestyle program.

The final room replicated NASA mission control, introducing The Earthrise Project, which is named after an iconic photo of the earth rising above the moon taken by the Apollo 8 crew.

Unlike The Partner Collection, Earthrise is driven by RYOT's editorial department, but Friedrich said there are a number of way to get brands involved.

“We are developing a digital hub where all the editorial will live, we are creating a documentary with an A-list celebrity, we are creating from RYOT thousands of pieces of content that will live over the next year, and many customer activations, where we can actually connect a brand with those consumers on the ground, engaging and interacting with them,” she said.

Many of the programming concepts for The Partner Collection, meanwhile, were informed by data. The company has a proprietary tool that seeks to understand why people engage with content, whether searching for something, looking to socially engage, or seeking inspiration.

Friedrich says in developing the concepts the company wanted to “look into the whitespace and see where demand wasn’t being met.”