How Dude Perfect Maintains Family Values and Honesty After 15 Years
By Movieguide® Contributor
After 15 years of successful YouTube videos for kids and families, the Dude Perfect guys are sharing how they’ve kept their channel family-friendly through their faith, identity and honesty.
“I think the glue for us has been our faith,” Cory Cotton said on the topic of settling arguments within the team. “The fact that we’re all Christians that’s what we can always come back to and I think that we have gotten better at cleaning the slate you know and we have gotten better.”
“It’s still hard for us,” Cory said in an interview with Jon Youshaei. “We’re all, you know, prideful guys, but, you know, we’ve gotten better saying, ‘Hey man, I was wrong.’ Like, ‘Will you forgive me?’ and that’s hard, that’s not an easy thing to do in life, but if you care about somebody and you want to keep you know the friendship and for us our business is our friendship, you know, that’s kind of the reality to what it is people see that on camera, and we want to be in a good place with each other, and that’s not easy.”
Cory’s twin, Coby Cotton, said previously, “Making content that was family-friendly came initially from our faith in Jesus, and we felt like that was something we really, truly wanted to do.”
Tyler Toney remembers the first brand that approached him for advertising was a beer company. At the time of the offer, Toney wasn’t even of legal drinking age.
“I was 20 years old,” said Toney. “So I wasn’t even in college, and they’re like ‘Hey, we want to give you guys free beer, as much as you want. Just put them in the videos,’ and you’re like it’s just not…like that’s what everybody would expect, you know, five college guys to kind of do…if they were to get fame and have a video and things like that.”
“Our faith is kind of that common thread that goes back to why we’re able to continue to do this we feel like 15 years later, and that just didn’t totally align with what we wanted to be known for or just really what we wanted to partake in even at that time, and so we turned it down, and early on I would say it did keep us from a lot of opportunities, and we would certainly have been, you know, opened up to more brands that we would be able to work with.”
The “number one” thing that parents communicate to Dude Perfect when they see them is gratitude for making content they can watch as a family and don’t have to be concerned about their young kids watching if they aren’t in the room.
“I think that’s kind of bled over into the brand world, too, [which] is why brands have been so open and willing to align with us,” Toney explained. “Now…we’ve proven that, and, you know, you brought up those timelines of those groups that were together, like it is wild to think that we’ve been doing this almost 15 years and that it’s a lot of trust and content built over those years, and so we don’t take that lightly. It’s something that we always try and steward well, and it’s turned out to be a real benefit to the business when originally, I don’t think that was necessarily the case.”
Garrett Hilbert said, “I just boil it down to…that’s just kind of who we were. We never made the intentional decision of like, ‘Hey we’re not going to film with alcoholic brands.’ It’s just we never really were into the party scene in college, so we were into just having fun, you know? Like so we just filmed us doing what we did in the daily life.”
Corey added that they always keep their trick shots honest, even when they’re hard, and could easily cheat to make it look like a shot was accomplished when it really wasn’t.
“When we made our very first video in our backyard, with the trick shots, there was a time when Ty did a shot over his head, and the ball swished right in front of the net. It didn’t actually go in, but on camera, you would have been completely convinced it went in, and we just made that decision…,” Corey said. “We want to always be able to look someone in the eye and say our shots are real, right? Our stunts are real.”
“And so we redid the shot until we made it, and we kind of have always looked back at that moment, anytime a similar situation happens, whenever we’re working hard to do a stunt, and obviously we’ve moved beyond trick shots and stuff now…but that kind of mantra for us of, you know, we’re not going to settle or just do what people would expect somebody to do or take a shortcut, you know,” he continued. “We want to do it the right way for our own sake as well. We want to, you know, be able to look in the mirror and be proud of what we’re doing.”
To celebrate the summer Olympics, Dude Perfect recently hosted their own Dude Perfect Mini Olympic games. Their games consisted of humorous battles of Shot Put, taking on a punching bag machine, balloon fencing and other light-hearted games. The comment shows the channel’s fans were fully and wholesomely entertained.
Movieguide® recently reported on Dude Perfect’s plans to create a facility for fans and families:
Dude Perfect is…moving its headquarters to a larger space. They’ve been in their current location for roughly seven years but wanted someplace bigger so they could shoot even crazier videos and also have a landing ground for fans who want to come and visit.
“There’ll be some additional sporting courts, I guess, some putt-putt, of course, basketball, pickleball will be there, a more well thought out studio design space and how other people can even utilize that,” Toney said.
“Coby mentioned a retail space for people to come and be able to actually purchase things because even now, here, we just don’t have anything that’s designed or open to the public, which is unfortunate,” he continued. “They just stand outside and take a really bad picture of the sign way too up high. So we’re excited about that to have at least a small place for them to come and visit.”
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