YouTube sensation Storybooth, which animates real-life stories submitted by tweens and teens, has inked a global deal with WildBrain to distribute its content beyond the AVOD platform for the first time. 

WildBrain will represent all 243 of these three-minute animated videos (pictured) featuring kids sharing stories about the challenges, fears and funny experiences they’ve had. Storybooth has attracted a massive audience of 4.6 million subscribers on YouTube since launching in 2016. And two of its most popular videos have respectively racked up 31 million (“I Sent Pictures To A Boy I Liked And Shouldn’t Have”) and 23 million views (“I Lost My Bikini!!! Bathing Suit Fail”). Adam F. Goldberg, creator of The Goldbergs, is also on board at Storybooth as an executive producer. 

Katie Wilson, WildBrain’s VP of global sales and acquisitions, has high hopes for this series that stands out from the rest of the company’s catalogue with its mix of unscripted stories and animation. “It’s a simple idea that delivers huge impact,” she says. “The authenticity, vulnerability and comedy behind these stories is something everyone can relate to. Some of them are heartbreaking, some are hilarious, but all are true, and that vulnerability really speaks to young people.” 

The bite-sized format of the episodes also gives buyers a lot of options for curating them based on themes for longer airplay, or keeping them as standalones, Wilson adds. 

Storybooth co-founder and managing partner Marcy Kaye views these 200-plus episodes as season one, and her team is starting production on a new batch of videos now. The goal with WildBrain is to attract public broadcasters and get the content adapted into other languages in order to increase its impact with the audience. 

How this content generation model works is that kids record themselves telling their story and then submit the audio file to Storybooth. It then takes the company two weeks to produce and deliver an animated episode (editing all of the stories down to about three minutes and keeping the identity of the kids anonymous). 

Storybooth has received more than 350,000 story submissions from tweens/teens all over the world in the last eight years. Brands interested in working with the company should know that the content isn’t all angst and schadenfreude—during the Parkland High School shooting in 2018, teens on the ground sent in stories just hours after it happened, which is a powerful example of Storybooth giving kids a voice, adds Kaye. 

“We don’t want perfect storytellers with the perfect voice or story; but we do want an arc that others can connect to,” she explains. “It’s hard to craft stories that are true to kids, but this is natural because [Storybooth’s stories] come from them.” 

While the content tends to skew a bit older since it reflects the lives of tweens/teens, it can also appeal to younger kids who want to hear about experiences they might face when they grow up a bit more, says Kaye. And older Gen Zs who started watching Storybooth years ago also still check it out. 

Leaning into this wide reach, Storybooth’s goal for the future is to become a studio in its own right that produces bespoke content for other age groups, says Kaye. The team is already talking about launching Storybooth Elementary, a version focused on animating the stories of middle-grade kids. 

WildBrain is bringing Storybooth to MIPJunior and MIPCOM later this month, along with the live-action series Secrets at Red Rocks (eight x 24 minutes), Malory Towers (20 x 22 minutes) and animated series Badjelly (13 x 22 minutes).