Arturo Yépez de 2b-Latam
From his offices in Quito, Ecuador, the CEO of 2bLatam, Arturo Yépez, was the guest of Ríchard Izarra at #PRODUprimetime, where he talked about the transition from Touché Films to 2bLatam, after the purchase by the Spanish company 2btube of a significant percentage of Touché Films. He explained the four lines of business: digital and premium content, brands, creators, and building their community.
JOINING WITH 2BTUBE
Yépez explained that since 2017 they have had a relationship with 2btube, when they showed interest in Enchufe.tv, and since 2btube had the mission of reaching Spanish-speaking audiences, “the largest comedy channel of the world in Spanish caught their attention,” he pointed out. The acquisition was completed in early 2019.
“I began to find synergies between the two companies. At the time, the great strength of Touché Films was audiovisual production, production of entertainment and humor content, and, obviously, all the know-how that we had by managing digital communities through Enchufe.tv and that we applied to make branded content, work with brands, but always from Enchufe.tv,” he said.
He explained that after joining 2btube they realized the great strength of the network, which entailed working with its own creators’ network, which is also connected to all the major digital content platforms in the world, such as YouTube, Facebook —now Meta—, TikTok, etc.
“So we found out that everything we used to do focused on Enchufe.tv and on YouTube could be taken and extended to the rest of the platforms and to other creators,” he said. At the end of 2021 they began to work together on audiovisual production in the Mexico office with a new branch of 2btube, in addition to digital and creators. In January of this year they became 2bLatam with offices in Quito and Mexico.
FOUR BUSINESS LINES
Now that 2bLatam has four very clear lines of business: the one that has represented them for ten years -Enchufe.tv-, which beyond an entertainment channel, it is a digital community of young audiences that consume Latin American humor; a creative agency that works with brands, known for its ‘branded’ sketches and already expanding to entertainment and digital communities; plus the network of creators, “We took the network of creators that 2btube had before in Mexico and turned it into the 2bLatam network of creators. We are adding creators from Ecuador, Peru, Argentina, to expand an entertainment network on digital platforms,” he said. Another line of business is 2bOriginals, “which is everyone’s dream, to make series and movies that compete with the great Hollywood series and movies that we all consume.”
He announced that they are about to launch an alliance with WarnerMedia, now Warner Bros. Discovery. “As of April 29, we are going to start broadcasting Enchufe.tv premieres on TNT for all of Latin America, a way of making a bit of this marriage between digital audiences and traditional television audiences.”
At the same time, he said that there will be surprises with premium content and a very strong platform. “We are closing the production of a series and we are working and advancing in our relationship with 3pas, Eugenio Derbez’s company, in a couple of contents that we are going to release to the market very soon,” he said.
