SRF and the Blick Group want to promote the Swiss YouTube scene

Web videos are becoming increasingly important in everyday life and are particularly popular with young audiences. Accordingly, the web video community in Switzerland is also growing steadily. Together with young talents, SRF and the Blick Group want to professionalize and further develop the still relatively young web video market in Switzerland. To this end, various events are to be launched in 2017 in close collaboration with the community.

At the end of September 2017, around 50 young Swiss web video makers will be invited to a workshop lasting several days at Google Switzerland on the Hürlimann site in Zurich. They will be briefed by professionals from various fields such as community management, storytelling and video production. The latest technologies and gadgets can also be tested on site. Finally, as part of this event, the participants will be able to apply their newly acquired know-how in a 72-hour competition.

In December, SRF and the Blick Group are also launching a web video contest in which the community can vote for the best talents from their own ranks. The aim is to create an event that is by the community for the community and increases the visibility of the talents - among themselves, but also beyond the community. The event will take place at Google Switzerland on the Hürlimann site in Zurich.

Stefano Semeria, Head of Young Audiences at SRF, said in a press release: "Web videos of all kinds on all kinds of platforms are among the most popular content for young Swiss people. SRF has been very successfully publishing programs for a young audience on various social media channels since November 2016. We want to expand this commitment together with the extremely creative Swiss web video scene."

Sebastian Pfotenhauer, Head of Video Blick Group/Ringier, is also convinced by the project: "Even though the web video scene in Switzerland is still small and highly fragmented due to the different language groups, we see great potential here. We are therefore delighted to support the mostly very young video makers in their development and to work with them more than ever before."

YouTube is also pleased about the planned series of events. Andreas Briese, YouTube Partner Manager in Munich, who is jointly responsible for the strategic development of YouTube in Germany, Austria and Switzerland: "The Swiss video scene has a lot of potential, because Swiss users in particular like to use YouTube frequently; more than half of Swiss people already watch online videos to find inspiration, be entertained or get tips on their everyday questions."