How an Insurance Company Made a Hit Web Series About Taking Risks

ince insurance companies are in the business of avoiding risk, you might not expect one to teach you to face your fears by jumping into unpredictable situations. But that’s exactly what Hiscox Small Business Insurance is doing with its six-part docu-series, “Courageous Leaders.”

You might not expect a Web series produced as a promotional tool for the Better Sleep Council to be very interesting, but “Suite 7” on Lifetime is worth checking out. What the council’s money has bought is the participation of recognizable performers like Milo Ventimiglia (“Heroes”) as a skeptical best man and Illeana Douglas as an actress on location debating whether to have sex with her co-star. (Mr. Ventimiglia also directed his episode, while Ms. Douglas wrote hers.)

Anyone who knows me knows that there’s nothing I love more than a witty turn of phrase. The repartee between the two characters is both adversarial and familiar. It’s Sorkin-esque in the best sense of the word.

New Form has released eight scripted short-form pilots from popular YouTube creators like Olan Rogers, Wilson Cleveland and Sammy Paul. It’s the third wave of pilots from New Form — whose backers include Brian Grazer, Ron Howard and Discovery Communications.

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SPiN is a 2016 WEBBY AWARD HONOREE

SPiN is a 2016 Webby Honoree for Drama: Individual Short. Narrative content created as a single short dedicated to dramatic material that premiered on the Internet.

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AIN'T IT COOL NEWS: INTRICATE VENGEANCE

Interesting pilot episode for what I presume will become a pretty fun show. Wilson Cleveland's built an interesting first episode that's got me eager to see what's next for this bizarre group of individuals.

Brands don’t like spending money on content created for any other purpose than compelling customers to buy their stuff. Hoping to get a brand to back your idea? Here are 5 things you need to know.

Launched in July 2014, New Form’s Incubator program has yielded 10 series orders to date. The first round of Incubator pilots included Sawyer Hartman’s “The Parallax Theory” and PJ Liguori’s “Oscar’s Hotel for Fantastical Creatures,” which were picked up as series for Vimeo On Demand.

For the third time in as many years, New Form has shared a slate of led by its partners in the online video space. The studio’s latest output represents the third wave of its “incubator series,” and it includes contributions from creators who are known for their work on YouTube and other digital platforms.

New York festival also adds special screenings of projects from YouTube Red, Fullscreen, StyleHaul, Disney's Maker Studios. Meghan Tonjes: Singer-songwriter, YouTube personality and spokeswoman for the Body Positivity, has appeared as a guest and performed on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show.” She can next be seen hosting SmartTV’s series “SEXish” and New Form Digital pilot “Intricate Vengeance.”

Hiscox company has partnered with Vox Media to distribute the new interview series show “Courageous Leaders” on the sites Vox News, SBNation, Curbed and The Verge, starting June 1.

Titled "Courageous Leaders," the six-episode series aims to be more realistic than vainglorious by chronicling the hard decisions that entrepreneurs made on the way up.

“I think there’s a stigma among independent creators that paying to promote your work is somehow inauthentic or selling out,” said Mr. Cleveland, who has helped produce, publicize and even act in multiple branded entertainment Web series.

Taking on Wall Street, irresponsible corporate spending, and the seedy truth behind the news, their latest short film, “SPiN” is a doozy.

Since breaking the mold of online entertainment, Cleveland founded UNboxd, his own creative digital studio, where he produces original series for brands, networks, and companies.

Cleveland, who also founded digital media and branded entertainment studio Unboxd, is one of the jury members for the talent section of the Adweek Watch Awards. If you want to get on his good side, you’ll probably want to emulate some of the actors he thinks are killing it online.

Wilson Cleveland is one of the most humble, yet prolific people working in digital media right now. Starting out as a film and television actor, Cleveland moved on from traditional television to carve out his own successful niche in digital video.

Consumer surveys conducted in Q3 2011 and Q3 2012 revealed aided brand awareness nearly doubled. The campaign also contributed to a 35% increase in product quotes viewed and products purchased online during the same time period.

About to wrap up their second season, this series follows the stories of a group of friends running a tech startup in Silicon Valley. It co-stars such notables as Eliza Dushku, Josh Malina, Craig Bierko, Emma Caulfield and Steven Weber. In a nod to what made their distribution medium viable, Leap Year often features cameos by real tech entrepreneurs, such as Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian. The Season 2 finale runs on Monday

what are the chances that a branded entertainment show produced in conjunction with a small business insurance company would work, let alone make it to Web series nirvana, i.e. a second season? But here comes season two of Leap Year, a show which debuted last year on Hulu, YouTube and a handful of other outlets—with longer episodes, more stars and a slightly bigger budget.

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