by William Needham Finley IV™

Holderness Family Signs Puppy to Multi-Year Deal

in ITBNN by

80 FreshUse this link or enter the code “ITB” to save 30% on your first order.


The Holderness Family, a globally known internet phenomenon based in Raleigh, made a huge announcement this week. In an effort to expand their media empire, the Holderni signed a multi-year deal with a puppy named Ruby.

Known for viral video hits like “Xmas Jammies”, the husband and wife team of Penn and Kim, along with their children Lola and Penn Charles, have spent the last few years covering family-friendly topics through parody music videos and a morning show on their YouTube channel. The family also has a Food Network Christmas special, airing December 17th at 4:00 pm, and have even developed a board game to capture the emerging “no screen” trend.

So far the family has found success, attracting over 760,000 likes on their Facebook page and over 200,000 subscribers to their YouTube channel. Despite this success, they recently realized they needed to make a change to their business model.

“Dogs are a hot market right now. We really wanted to diversify our content and branch out into dogs. When we saw the success of the Dogs of ITB Instagram account we knew we had to move fast,” said Penn Charles, 6, Creative Director of the family.

Lola, Director of Strategy, added, “A puppy will lighten our workload as well. We spend a lot of time coming up with ways to be cute kids. I can’t tell you how many sugar cookies we had to eat last week while filming a cooking video. Now all we’ll have to do is turn the camera on and point it at the dog. Literally.”

Once they agreed to venture into the canine vertical, the family began searching for a dog to adopt, which resulted in the following:

The trip by Penn and Kim didn’t go over well at first. “They went to pick out the dog without consulting us, which totally goes against protocol. We’re supposed to make business decisions as a family. My main concern was that they would spend $3,000 on a purebred English Cream Golden Retriever, which wouldn’t fit our target demo at all,” said Penn Charles.

Lola quickly added, “Can you imagine the backlash from the social justice warriors on the internet? I can see the clickbait headlines, ‘Whitest family alive gets whiter by buying white purebred dog’. We just don’t have time to deal with that kind of backlash.”

Penn Charles continued, “I’m glad we got a rescue but I still think we’re missing an opportunity by not naming her ‘Rescue’. Now we’re going to have to start every conversation with, ‘This is Ruby. Yeah, she’s a rescue.’ and that’s going to get old REAL fast. This is why it’s hard to work with Kim and Penn sometimes. But at the end of the day I’m sure other family media empires are facing similar challenges. Plus, if I push back too hard during meetings they’ll make me go to bed at 8:00 pm with no dessert.”

image1-copy

The Holderni signed Ruby to a multi-year deal to produce puppy, and, eventually, dog related content. The terms of the deal are still unclear. Insiders have said Ruby was a tough negotiator, oftentimes turning her nose up at an offer before peeing on the carpet and then scampering away.

“Yeah, negotiations were tough,” admitted Penn. “We were just going to sign the dog to a 2 year deal (14 years in dog years) because internet trends are hard to predict. What if dogs go out of style in two years?”

“I mean, we’d obviously keep the dog and love it like family, but if dog content starts to get stale we’d keep the dog off camera like our other child, Jake Holderness,” added Kim, while spraying Resolve on the carpet and blotting up a stain. Note: Jake Holderness, 13, could not be reached for comment.

Expect more dog content from the Holderni, including videos such as, “I Just Wanna Train My Dog Tonight” set to the tune of “Your Love” by The Outfield. Ruby’s first appearance in an official Holderni video can be seen below.

image1-3

2 Comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.

Latest from ITBNN

Go to Top