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Ben Relles
Content Strategy, Office of Reid Hoffman / Formerly YouTube + Google
Ben is currently Head of Innovation for YouTube Originals. Prior to this role he was Head of Unscripted development for YouTube and oversaw films like This is Everything featuring Gigi Gorgeous and Demi Lovato: Simply Complicated and series including Mind Field from Michael Stevens, Katy Perry: Witness World Wide and What the Fit? from Kevin Hart. Before joining the YouTube Originals division, Ben served as YouTube’s Global Head of Creative Strategy.
Prior to joining YouTube, Ben was Vice President of Programming and Content Development at online video leader Next New Networks where he led content strategy as the company built viewership to over 2 billion total views. In March 2011 Next New Networks was acquired by YouTube.
Ben started in entertainment when he founded the comedy network Barely Political in 2007 which has been viewed over 3 billion times since launching. Ben started Barely Political with his series of "Obama Girl" videos which quickly became a worldwide phenomenon.
Ben received his MBA in Marketing Strategy from the Wharton School of Business in 2004. Ben was a founding partner of MarketVision, Inc and spent several years at Omnicom agencies including BBDO, DDB and TBWA. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, and their three children.
Specialties: Marketing, Online video, Social Media
Highlights
Scrolling through Tik Tok and I show up in my own feed...but it's me from 31 years ago. I'm right before "There is a sense of insecurity... which is probably realistic." A little unfair to describe an entire generation, but I must say spot on for 18 year old me.
Looking for hundreds of the latest creative AI projects, neatly organized and easily searchable in one place? So you can stay updated on how people are leveraging AI across video, music, gaming and art?
RealCreative.ai was created with that in mind. I used Coda to make it (one of the companies I work with currently, and also a product I use myself) but this is my first “public” doc.
The site is still a work in progress, but the concept is to showcase what creatives are doing right now with AI. There are some great lists of AI tools, and AI companies, but I hadn’t seen a tracker focused specifically on regular updates of the latest projects and creators.
When I worked at YouTube, we would pay attention to what the most creative channels and creators were posting—in part to help understand where new formats were headed. And similar to the early days of YouTube, there is a growing community of early adopters experimenting with these new AI tools. This includes some people who weren’t creators at all before, as well as some YouTube creators from the early days like CorridorDigital and Joe Penna who are creating some of the most fascinating things with AI to date.
I should mention I do recognize how complicated this topic is given the impact on artists, and I do think creativity is inherently human. Anyway, I made a short video below walking through the site. And if you go to RealCreative.ai you can also sign up for a weekly update of recent projects. Feedback is welcome in the comments, as are recommendations on projects to add. Thanks for checking it out!
