CREATIVE DIRECTOR + BRAND STRATEGIST
RT First+
Role: Brand Strategy, Creative Director
Site: roosterteeth.com
Rooster Teeth FIRST was a subscription streaming platform designed to deepen the relationship between Rooster Teeth and its highly engaged fan community. I worked with the VP of Marketing to evolve FIRST from a single $4.99 membership into a tiered subscription ecosystem designed to increase subscriber acquisition, retention, and lifetime value.
The strategy expanded the membership proposition across exclusive content, early access, ecommerce, gaming, RTX, merchandise, and ultimately a premium physical membership experience through Double Gold. The result was significant subscriber growth and a stronger direct relationship between Rooster Teeth and its audience that became an important part of the company's appeal to WarnerMedia.
SEE CASE STUDY BELOW
STANDOUT METRICS
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150K → 200K Subscribers by year 2
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225K Subscribers After FIRST+ Launch
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$4.99 → $34.99 Tiered Membership
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Subscription Growth Strengthened WarnerMedia Acquisition Appeal
RT First+ | CASE STUDY
The Challenge
Rooster Teeth FIRST had launched the previous year as a $4.99 subscription offering ad-free viewing, early access to videos, exclusive content, and member discounts across the Rooster Teeth platform and app.
The initial offering established a successful subscription foundation, but there was an opportunity to create stronger reasons for fans to join, upgrade, and remain subscribed.
The challenge was to evolve FIRST beyond a single streaming benefit into a broader membership ecosystem that increased perceived value while strengthening the relationship between Rooster Teeth and its most engaged audience.
The Insight
Rooster Teeth had something most streaming platforms could not easily replicate: a highly passionate community with strong emotional and commercial connections to its creators, shows, events, merchandise, and gaming properties.
The opportunity was to make FIRST feel less like paying for access to content and more like membership in the Rooster Teeth community. By layering increasingly valuable benefits across different price points, FIRST could serve different levels of fan engagement while creating a natural path toward higher-value memberships.
The Strategy
Working with the VP of Marketing, I helped evolve FIRST into a tiered membership strategy that connected content, commerce, experiences, and community.
The approach introduced additional levels of membership with increasingly valuable benefits, including enhanced ad-free viewing, early access, exclusive content, ecommerce benefits, RTX ticket access and pre-sale opportunities, gaming benefits, and ultimately a premium physical subscription experience. The goal was to create multiple entry points for new subscribers while giving existing members compelling reasons to upgrade and remain part of the ecosystem.
The Solution
I helped shape the creative strategy and brand experience for the evolution of Rooster Teeth FIRST, translating the expanded membership proposition into a cohesive customer-facing experience.
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The original $4.99 FIRST membership offered ad-free viewing, early video access, exclusive content, and member discounts.
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FIRST+, introduced at $9.99, expanded the value proposition with ecommerce and digital benefits, including free domestic standard shipping from the Rooster Teeth Store, discounted international shipping, a digital copy of Vicious Circle, and a distinctive FIRST+ status marker within the Rooster Teeth community.
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At the premium end, Double Gold transformed the subscription into a physical membership experience. Launched in 2017 at $34.99, Double Gold included the full FIRST offering along with a subscription box featuring new Rooster Teeth merchandise releases and branded items.
This expanded FIRST from a streaming subscription into a broader membership ecosystem connecting content, commerce, events, gaming, merchandise, and community.
The Learning
Double Gold became an important test of how Rooster Teeth's audience valued premium membership. While the $34.99 subscription box created a high-value physical expression of the brand, its rotating contents and themes revealed that fans wanted greater choice over the merchandise and content they purchased.
When the Double Gold Box sunset in 2018, we used that insight to evolve the membership strategy rather than simply replicate the model.
The next iteration placed greater emphasis on premium exclusive content, dedicated merchandise for fan-favorite shows, and a stronger connection between FIRST membership and the Rooster Teeth Store. This allowed fans to engage with the brand in the ways they valued most while creating more opportunities to drive both subscription and ecommerce growth.
The Outcome
Rooster Teeth FIRST grew from approximately 150,000 subscribers in its first year to 200,000 after its second year. Following the launch of FIRST+, the platform grew to approximately 225,000 subscribers at its peak.
The success demonstrated that Rooster Teeth could build and scale a direct relationship with a large, highly engaged audience through a combination of content, community, commerce, and exclusive experiences.
That subscriber success became an important part of Rooster Teeth's acquisition appeal as WarnerMedia evaluated the company. With WarnerMedia developing HBO Max at the time, Rooster Teeth's experience building a successful subscription platform and deeply engaged streaming audience became strategically valuable.
Following the acquisition, the Rooster Teeth team became a go-to creative partner within WarnerMedia, bringing the experience and insight developed through FIRST into broader streaming initiatives, including support for the rollout of HBO Max.
