MTV

Make Celebrity Deathmatch for TikTok and get millions of followers

Shaan pitches reviving MTV's claymation Celebrity Deathmatch as a TikTok account, now far cheaper to produce with modern/AI graphics. He predicts a well-executed account doing deathmatches between TikTokers could hit millions of followers fast and make roughly $1M/year in sponsorships.

“I bet you if you made a TikTok account that was like the poor man's version of Celebrity Deathmatch, you'd probably get 5 million followers in like 3 weeks., and you could make, I don't know, probably $1 million a year just sponsored off sponsored stuff of your TikTok channel. That's going to be because you're going to be way better production than any TikTok account, and it's completely permissionless.”

Steal thisRevive a beloved, hard-to-produce old format using cheap modern tools and TikTok's permissionless distribution; superior production stands out instantly.

Sell the lifestyle, not the product (the MTV playbook)

Drawing on his MTV background, Werdelin made Bark's content about the dog-owner lifestyle ('what do you do if your dog doesn't like your boyfriend') rather than utilitarian product copy. They even trolled political forums posting from a dog's point of view to build a culture of playfulness people wanted to share.

“I think our content would be more about like, what do you do if you're dog doesn't like your boyfriend, then it was about like 5 ways to clean the paw of your dog. And I think everything, things tend to be pretty utilitarian because most product owners or entrepreneurs were like, well, I need to sell my stuff.”

Steal thisMake your content about your customer's lifestyle and identity, not your product's features — it's more shareable and easier to associate with.

He bribed an engineer and hijacked MTV Australia at 2am

Early in his career Werdelin pitched a UGC-style web/TV show idea that MTV engineers dismissed as impossible on a Windows 95 machine. So he bribed the transmission engineer, discovered the offices were wired for broadcast, and went live at 2am without permission — turning the stunt into a job running product development for all MTV channels outside the US.

“So I got a little bit stubborn and figured out that all the offices was wired for broadcast. And so I bribed the transmission engineer and I went live at 2 in the morning from my studio without permission. And so back in the days, that didn't kind of land you in jail at MTV.”