It’s been a bit busy at FULLY CHARGED over the last 6 months. So much so that I simply haven’t had time to add to the excellent INSIGHTS section of our website for some considerable time.
As if an average of 4 episodes and 1 podcast every week wasn’t time-consuming enough, preparations for Fully Charged OUTSIDE went into overdrive this Summer, and I am still not sure how the team managed.
But with the UN Convention on Climate Change following so soon after, we barely had time to draw breath before working on 2 studio productions (Stop Burning Stuff and Talking About Our Generation). COP26 itself was an anticlimax.
Now at long last, we are able to reflect on recent months, and share some of our BIG plans. Ahead of 2022, the excitement amongst our ever-expanding team has never been higher.
THE TEAM
When the pandemic struck, Robert and my first instincts were to protect our talented team. While that was not easy, we managed to emerge from a challenging 18 months, with a stronger and (slightly) larger team.
As well as strengthening the team as a whole, we also took the opportunity to strengthen our global network of presenters too.
We are delighted to announce a number of new faces for 2022, including a new North American presenter, Ricky Roy from the Two Bit Da Vinci channel, and a new Australian presenter, Simone Annan from CarTell.TV.
This means FULLY CHARGED has access to a combination of more than 30 employees and freelancers, enabling us to get our message out to more and more people around the world.
OUR MISSION
And what is that message? Well those that watch regularly will know that we want the world to #StopBurningStuff, to push past the combustion technologies that are the chief culprits for air pollution and the climate emergency.
But the depressing reality is that, while we and our core followers understand the urgency, our YouTube metrics show that the world at large is less interested in these existential threats, than it is in the cool or cutting edge tech that we cover.
As ever, the way to win people over appears to be showing them that electric vehicles (of all shapes and sizes) and sustainable technologies are simply streets ahead of dirty, polluting technologies.
CHANNEL ONE (Fully Charged Show)
To that end, we will be redoubling our efforts to grow our audience in 2022, and with our schedule for January-July already planned, we can confirm that we have some extraordinary episodes in production.
It’s been a tough time for YouTube in the last 18 months as their market share is being eaten by Amazon Prime, Disney+, Netflix et al at the longer-form end, and by Tik-Tok for shorter-form content.
This led to YouTube ‘strongly urging’ us to activate all advertising on FULLY CHARGED episodes and gave us a very difficult decision earlier this year.
What we can say though is that the financial contributions from Patreons and YouTube Members have enabled us to not simply bow to clickbait trends and to cover topics that others simply won’t touch such as our recent episode on Tyre Particulates.
We have been very disturbed of late by ‘mainstream media’ coverage of the topics that we care about. It’s our aim to be the antidote to the ‘fear, uncertainty and doubt’ (FUD) that is being pumped into the public discourse by the polluters lobby.
CHANNEL TWO (Fully Charged PLUS)
While the idea of developing a 2nd channel was always part of the longer-term plan, let’s just say it took on an increased importance when our LIVE events were shunted into the long grass.
The good news is that now PLUS is up and running we are also able to add a non-paid episode every week from early next year, in addition to the paid episodes we film for 3rd party companies.
As might have been expected we have had to trial different types of content to see what works for our audience, and what does not, and we are now in a position to be much more selective.
What we can say for sure is that you can expect to see much more of our ‘home energy’ focussed episodes on Fully Charged PLUS, as well as some other exciting content that we can’t wait to share with you.
FULLY CHARGED PRODUCTIONS
Another advantage of Fully Charged PLUS is that we have been able to demonstrate our storytelling and production expertise.
We think for a small start-up like ours it’s pretty impressive to have already created content for well-known brands like KIA, Leaseplan, National Grid, Octopus, Polestar and XPeng, amongst others.
Feedback for the work we have done has been exceptional, and this has opened up many more extraordinary opportunities.
This developing production business leads us very naturally onto our next objective, to ensure that 2022 is the year we finally breakthrough to being on other mainstream broadcasting and streaming platforms.
UK & EUROPE
It’s no exaggeration to say our UK event was a triumph, and that the 3rd ‘LIVE’ show in the UK cemented itself in the consciousness of the industries that underpin it. Interest in exhibiting or sponsoring in 2022 is nothing short of extraordinary.
To ensure it fulfils its potential to become ‘THE Electric Home & Motor Show’ we will be investing heavily in the 4th outing at Farnborough at the end of April.
But first, we have the launch of Fully Charged LIVE Europe in the Netherlands next March (18th-20th)
Excitement is building for a show that will have a distinctly Dutch flavour, with bikes and boats, as well as clean energy and electric cars on show.
NORTH AMERICA & AUSTRALIA
Another negative of the pandemic is that we have been unable to travel to the United States or to Australia, and this has made it impossible to stick to our original event timelines of April and October 2022 respectively.
We sincerely regret this, but it is our hope that everyone will understand.
This is especially bad news for our planned event in Austin, as there was no availability at our preferred venue for Fall 2022, while we hope to return to Texas, we will be changing both the date and State.
Next September (10th-11th) we will be hosting Fully Charged LIVE in San Diego, California.
In Australia, we are sticking with Sydney, but Fully Charged LIVE Australia will now take place in March 2023 (11th-12th).
On a positive note we are strengthening our ties to the US and Australia with the new presenter appointments as mentioned above. Anyway, that’s quite enough for now – another 50 emails will be in my inbox in the time it’s taken to write this – as ever though, we would like to offer our sincere thanks for your support; it drives everything we do!
If you are a Patreon, Seedrs or YouTube member you can watch Robert and I discuss all of the above in more detail.
