YouTube has been around for nearly two decades. 

So, why are most brands still so bad at it?

For this chat, Paul & Verity sit down with Chloe McCullough (YouTube Lead @ JD Sports & consultant to brands like SheerLuxe) to ask what building a real brand channel looks like.

From scrapping paid media to focusing on organic reach, from creator-first strategies to serialized formats that cut through; Chloe’s taken JD from a confused content mix to a media powerhouse. In this episode, LIVE from the Brand Advocacy Summit: London, she lays out exactly how she did it.

 

What you'll learn:

 

• Why YouTube Isn’t A Social Channel – And how brands should treat it instead. Chloe explains how its long-form depth, search behaviours, and retention-led success mean it plays by totally different rules.
  
  
• How JD Built Hit Series, Like ‘The Masked Rapper’, That Scaled Reach & Community – Replicating TV-style content can create cost-effective, bingeable formats that grow your channel.
  
  
• Why Most YouTube Strategies Fail –  Hint: they’re borrowed from TikTok. Hear what marketers get wrong when they treat Shorts like other short-form, and ignore long-form fundamentals.
  
  
• What Metrics Actually Matter – Learn how to read them like a strategist, so you can optimise your thumbnails, titles, and audience retention with clarity.
  
  
• When Creators Are Worth The Budget – And what to do if yours isn’t huge.
  
  
• Why Thumbnails, Titles & SEO Aren’t Afterthoughts – They are the strategy. See how Chloe tests & tweaks to unlock consistent growth, even before you’ve built an audience.
  
  

This episode isn’t about gaming the algorithm. It’s about building an audience that stays.

 

Chapters
00:00 – Why Brands Still Don’t Get YouTube
02:50 – What Makes a Brand Channel Actually Work
05:42 – YouTube SEO, Community & Creator Thinking
13:41 – Titles, Thumbnails & the 1% Rule
15:07 – Serialized Content: Why It Cuts Cost & Builds Audience
19:40 – Shorts Strategy & What Drives Real Growth
23:33 – Community Building & Sentiment Shifts at JD
26:40 – The 3 YouTube Metrics That Actually Matter

 

Rate & review Building Brand Advocacy:

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Connect with Chloe:

On LinkedIn

On JD Sports’ YouTube

Subscribe to Chloe’s Newsletter

 

Verity (00:01.57)

So Chloe is the YouTube channel lead at JD Sports, but is also a consultant and works with some awesome brands, including Sheer Looks. And the reason why we invited Chloe to talk about YouTube is obviously she's living and breathing it every single day. She's got great content around it. She's got a great newsletter. So I'm sure you should all sign up to that. It's full of so many tips and tactics in terms of how to get started. But that's what we're going to talk about today. Because I think...

 

Like I said, it feels like YouTube is just, it's not on top of everyone's mind. Although maybe it is, but they just don't know how to get started. Like, why do you think it's still flying under the radar for so many brands?

 

I think it feels like a beast. I think it feels, and it is, it's like you guys work in social, right? It's relentless and YouTube is the same, but I think because it's long form, you do have to be a bit more considered when you're thinking about YouTube. You can't just jump on trends and you can be quick with it, but the turnaround time's a lot quicker and a lot longer. Probably bigger budgets are needed. know there are...

 

from our side. And I think people are unfamiliar in how to approach it and what to post on there. Especially as a brand, like what content do you put on there? I'm quite fortunate in that we had an existing channel that was quite active. So we kind of just, we strategize the whole thing. A lot of brands don't have that, but I do think there's a massive space for brands. I've got a conspiracy on this, but there's a space for brands.

 

to start taking to what it is.

 

Paul (01:36.664)

We want to know conspiracy is.

 

So if you think about it, there's no Gok Wan, there's no how to get ready in 10 minutes, there's no, you know all of the daytime shows or all of the easy watch shows, where are they? They don't exist anymore and so there's, I personally, I don't know. Does anyone know if Neighbors of the Lakes are this? Does it? Is EastEnders going?

 

Natives still exist.

 

Paul (02:00.718)

Okay, if you're

 

Yeah, I know that because Sonya's just left, which was a big miles. Not that I watch it, by the way. I don't want to lose any street cred from that comment. It's social media.

 

would be so niche for all the American audiences, isn't it?

 

But I think I'm definitely experiencing it, but I think the audience is also experiencing a little bit of social fatigue. And so there's a massive gap in my opinion for brands and creators to fill the void of long form content. then viewing habits for YouTube are considerably increasing on view time on TVs and the way that people are watching. So the behavior is changing and therefore...

 

now is the time to start to think about YouTube and how you speak to your audience in a different way.

 

Verity (02:50.988)

And for the brands that really want to get serious about YouTube, what does a good brand channel look like? What are the non-negotiables?

 

I think it all depends on your objectives, who you're talking to, your consumer, what else is happening in the market. Ask me that question again.

 

Like what are the non-negotiables for a really good brand channel?

 

I think consistency, it depends what industry you're in. Like I run the JD Channel, which is very different to what you guys would put out if you were putting it. And I came from beauty. So when I got there, I was like, what the hell is going on? It's great now, but it was a lot of like confession stuff or like dating dilemmas. It was not good.

 

What is good? What does JD's look like?

 

Verity (03:39.886)

that seem related to the brand.

 

No, but it's what other people were doing in the space. And so that's what was happening. We were just kind of rinsing and repeating and not being original. And I think originality is something, but also how do you tie in trends and make them your own? But how do you speak to your audience in your tone of voice? What are they interested in? And again, how do you speak to that? I don't know if I answered that correctly, but.

 

I think of the best brand channels for them to check out for inspiration.

 

This is such a hard question, you know. I've been asked this before, but I find it hard to answer because there's not a lot of brands that are active on there consistently. Do you guys watch any brand channels on there? I just don't know if they exist other than just...

 

Represent were doing some good stuff. They're amazing. I don't think.

 

Chloe (04:33.646)

No, and it's a lot about George and how he builds the brand, isn't it? Which I think is a really interesting spin, because obviously his story is incredible. And he's become a brand in his own right, so I think that works. But other than that, I don't know any brands that do YouTube consistently or really well. Unless I'm missing something, I think the issue for brands is that there's, one, it's a very slow channel. You've got to be so patient with it. You've got to really nurture it.

 

opportunity.

 

Chloe (05:02.702)

And there's no immediate ROI. I know we're gonna talk about YouTube shop in a bit, but it takes a lot of budget for what looks like not a lot back. However, the community side of it, which again, I think we're gonna touch on, is it's crazy the community you can build on there.

 

I mean, we just had a conversation out there before we came on and you said, you know, how long have you been doing the channel? You've only just started looking at the SEO side of it. I mean, that to me blows my mind. And I know like you're probably, so stupid, but like, but when I think YouTube, I think SEO. And you get people asking you about that as well. And you're like, no, that's not what you start with.

 

in a half years.

 

Yeah, yeah.

 

Chloe (05:42.67)

Yeah, I think I said this also, but I think I'm a bit naive and don't have like a massive beauty background, I don't have a degree or anything. So I kind of just came into it completely blind and had to just speak to creators about how to run a channel, which I feel very fortunate about now because I run it a bit like a creator channel. But I think it's massively over complicated. I think people think you need loads of tools and all singing, all dancing production. I think the...

 

think that you need SEO and paid. And we started with a lot of paid and we started with all of this big strategy. And I took it all away because it wasn't working. I felt like there was too much to think about and it was too hard. It should be easier. And so I took it all away. I took paid away and I just got really good concepts, paired it with really good creators and the channel just started to fly and it's all fully organic and it's the strongest.

 

channel that we have at JD.

 

You mentioned that you're treating it like a creator. In terms of other brands, is that the strategy they should probably go down as well? You've worked across obviously shorts, long form podcasts and lives. What would you recommend for brands as a content form?

 

Again, I think it depends on what your audience are interested in and what tools you've got access to. I was very lucky in that we had, you know, Chunks, who is a huge YouTuber, and he was our ambassador. And that was actually my job, that was my role when I worked, when I started at JD to manage his strategy. So we were in a very fortunate position that that was the only resource I had, really. No one in the business really knew anything about YouTube, so I had to lean on them. And therefore their opinion really...

 

Chloe (07:28.014)

what we were doing on the channel and it's worked. And I think, you you were talking about authenticity in the previous chat, but it's really helped us to connect with our community and grow it because the boys are just, they just come on and they're completely themselves. So I think it works, but again, it depends on your objectives. You know, I work with Shea Lux and they run a podcast and that's one of their best performing pieces of content and one of their best performing series.

 

over some celebrity stuff that they do. it all just depends on what's working on social and how you pull that across and how you take the learnings. But also it's like any other channel, it's trialing and erroring and learning what works and what doesn't and doing more of what does.

 

What do mean by best performing? We're talking financially, we're talking about reach, how do you measure that?

 

Again, it depends on your audience. our JD, ours is purely community building. At the minute, it will change as we grow. In terms of reach and view, so growth is reach and then attracting new audience. So you can see on YouTube, new viewers, returning viewers. So yeah, their podcast brings in more new viewers.

 

And it's an interesting medium as well with YouTube because it's long form as you said, apart from shorts, which I suspect there's a lot more brands are on shorts because they're just recreating their TikTok content than they are on the long form for. But, you know, 20 minute plus content, same as podcasts, it's there. But I think now the YouTube premium is now over 100,000 subs, which is almost as big as some of the massive OTT channels. Like people are now watching it. Raise your hand here if you watch YouTube on your TV at home.

 

Paul (09:11.672)

So it's a good chunk of people here, which is new. You used to be watching your laptop and then your phone, but actually this idea of sitting down and watching it on the TV, opening it with the remote is just such a different concept. I'm fascinated to know if you think of how brands can show up in that context. Is there a world where they can? Are we looking for brand-created content, or do you think it's easier for a brand to align themselves against a creator, a Mr. Beast-style sponsorship? So you're just a part of that story.

 

to being in terms of brands showing up on creators channels.

 

so how does a brand make sure that they show up in a 20 minute plus piece of content? Do they create it themselves? Do they find someone else who's creating and sponsor it? How would you recommend that to a brand?

 

I think it all depends on budgets. It depends how you run it, because it can be a low budget channel if you're producing in-house and if you've got the means and the resource to do it. And I work on channels that are big budget and low budget. I think if you're budget restricted and resource restricted, I would tap into creator channels. But again, that's not cheap. YouTubers typically are a lot more valuable than...

 

social influences and so they charge a lot more.

 

Verity (10:30.109)

not the news they wanted to hear.

 

Is that just the big ones or do you think there's some untapped opportunity if you were to go out and try and find the cheaper alternative, where would you be fishing?

 

Of course there is. think a lot of creators, it's interesting, I'm having a lot of conversations with influencer and talent agencies at the minute to educate their content creators on how to be on YouTube, because a lot of people want to be on YouTube, but again, they don't know how to approach it. But a lot of the smaller creators are starting to just repurpose their content on there. My friend actually owns an influencer agency and she has a couple of brands in the US that are starting to do UGC.

 

on YouTube, I think over the next couple of years, definitely YouTube's gonna become more aggressive in the creative space.

 

I think it'd really interesting to see those like even from a brand ambassador program stuff, which is what I do all day long. Like I think about 90 % of the activities and the briefs and the tasks that are created on it will go to TikTok and Instagram. And that's 10 % off everything else, whether that's YouTube, Strava, Pinterest, they'll combine. I don't think it's in front of mind for marketers, but I suspect you've got a ton of overlap between those creators that creating TikTok. They're also on YouTube in a different way.

 

Chloe (11:46.242)

I also think the consumer pool is much bigger. YouTube is the second most visited website in the world. Like it's huge. So it's just not to be underestimated. I think if scale and growth is a key KPI for any brand, it's where you should be.

 

Yeah, I want to get really specific. So titles, I hear a lot about thumbnails and I'm trying to get so much better at thumbnails. know, Diary of a CEO, they test like, what, 1500 thumbnails per episode or something stupid? Like what are the sort of like must do's that you need to use on YouTube to get those views and to get that engagement?

 

think this is also something that people don't know where to start with on YouTube. YouTube is Google, isn't it, in video form? So the backend tells you loads of data in terms of how you should package things, what people are searching for. There's loads. You can watch retention. If you watch your retention, I'm such a nerd, but if you watch your retention on your videos, like if I look at my last 10 videos, I can see that people are...

 

rewatching when we talk about music, for example. So therefore I know that when I talk about music in a video, I see a massive spike and it drives massive subs and growth. So then I know how to do that more. But how you package it, thumbnails, thumbnails title are important, but they have to be relevant to your video. And I think this is where SEO comes in, which I'm gonna start testing on our channel in the next few weeks. But...

 

they have to stand out YouTube's a crowded platform. So think about it as if you're scrolling through Netflix and it's got to be scroll stopping. It's got to be eye catching, but it's also got to be relevant. And I think you can play around like even if you look at our channel two years ago, six months ago, they looked so different. We've got one coming out tonight and it's the best thumbnail we've ever done. Like it's incredible, but they adapt over time. And it's that I know it's so overspoken about at the minute, but it's that like.

 

Chloe (13:41.23)

1 % increase of learning every single day. And that's how you grow. it's a, I keep saying it, but it's a really slow platform. But if you take that mentality, if you look back at your channel and you're consistent over six months, your channel will look so different and it will be performing a lot differently because you're tweaking little bits every day. But yeah, title, the way that you title and you thumbnail your video should synergize. Yeah.

 

And then we're also seeing a lot of like, I can't say the word, but like a series of content, like, you know, we've seen like the group chat and I mean, obviously that's more on TikTok, but are you seeing that working on YouTube as well? Like if brands are coming out with like a series, episodes, that's the word I'm looking for. Like, is that anything that you've tried at JD?

 

serialized content. Yeah. So pretty much everything that we do is serialized and that's just how our consumer is used to seeing things. It's very expensive to do episodic things, siloed stuff, depending on what you're doing and the scale of production, but it's expensive. we also, work with big creators, which is costly. So you have to squeeze what you can out of them in a day. So we shoot everything serialized, but you don't need to.

 

Again, it depends on your objectives, but it is cost saving and more efficient to do serialised.

 

And the meme by Serious Content.

 

Chloe (15:07.118)

So we shoot three or four episodes in a day and then if it works and the audience are engaged, we'll do it again and we'll just optimize it for stronger performance. If it doesn't work and that doesn't mean it doesn't get views, it means that people aren't engaged with it as much, they're not commenting on it as much, it's not trending on TikTok or whatever. So we look at all of that and decide if we do it again or not.

 

Can you give us an example of the series that you've done?

 

Yeah, so we do something called The Mass Rapper, which we have like big names on and it's a bit like The Mass Singer, but we JD-ify it. It's very cool and urban. Which I am not. It's so funny that I run this channel mental. But yeah, so we do something called that and it was one of the first series. So what I wanted to do when I started the channel was to just...

 

create content that nobody had ever seen before. So we kind of came up with this TV meets YouTube thing. And that we came up with something called the timeline, which takes celebrities and we talk them through their life. But then we do this general knowledge quiz throughout. So it's very YouTubey. So that was one. And then we do something called Mass Rapper, which is like our version of the masked singer. And we've just, it's going live tonight, series four of that or five. And it's a series that kind of put us on the map and gave JD

 

a bit of a different DNA to what we were doing prior. So you can sculpt content that feels like your brand. And then the more you go, you delve deeper into that. that's what creates the connection in the audience.

 

Paul (16:50.274)

What's the relation to followers to views? mean, so how many views would a show like that get for you guys? And we were talking earlier about TikTok, and actually you can have 10 followers today and then do a post that reached a million people. YouTube's and Instagram posts at least are quite different to that. My sense is YouTube's somewhere in between that. So how do you navigate that?

 

Again, YouTube is extremely slow. So what you won't see with YouTube is like dips. You won't see ups and downs or definitely in my experience across all of the channels I've looked after, but you'll see continuous growth if you do, if you're approaching it correctly. But you have to work with the data. You can't work on opinion because it doesn't work. So you'll see really slow or you should see really slow, but continuous growth. And you'll see spikes, but they won't be like TikTok. You won't get like a viral post.

 

once a week or once a month or whatever, it'll be a consistent cadence. But it should slowly climb, yeah. It takes a long time, but it does.

 

Yeah, because I'm intrigued, like I'm going off piece here, but like say if a brand is just starting a new channel completely, like it takes time to build that data though, doesn't it? And so do they just have to go off like gut reaction to start off with until that data is there for them to actually work off?

 

Yeah, but off of one video, you'll get data to take into the next. But it is slow. I sit down with brands and they ask me a lot of questions. When will we start to see, everyone wants to see results, everyone wants views, everyone wants subs. And then I say, yeah, we'll talk about that in a year. And they're like, what? And I'm like, seriously, you can not. It took us and we were a pre-existing channel. Our audience is so epped with YouTube. It's where they watch content.

 

Chloe (18:31.842)

And it took us, where JD, like a massively established brand, it took us 12 months to sort our shit out on the channel. It's long, it's slow, and it's hard. It's not an easy platform, but it's so rewarding. Like, it's incredible. And like I said, we're the most engaged with channel at JD, which is, you know, it's incredible. And then we'll go into America and Europe soon, and YouTube will be the key channel to take us there because of the...

 

sheer magnitude of it.

 

So like, asking for a friend if you were to be running a podcast. And we've recently, okay. I've ruined that one. We recently.

 

I'm a consultant guy.

 

We've started to put everything on YouTube, videoing, this whole thing's been videoed to try and get there. You've got tens of thousands of hits come through it, then actually you go on YouTube, it's like tens of hundreds or something because you've got nothing there. That doesn't look good because no one knows what's going on there. Do you have any advice for how to balance that? Do you think it's just got to stick with it? What would your advice be to my friend?

 

Chloe (19:40.31)

Just keep learning. I'm going to, well, I've smirked up my ass now, but I took a channel last year podcast and it was on 15K subs. I think I started it in March last year. By December, we hit 100K. And that's purely because I looked at the data. So I was looking at like what people were searching for, which are the channels they were watching, where was the audience coming from? Like I didn't, if I'm being honest, I didn't pay too much attention to the content. We put it in a structure so we...

 

made engaging intros and we asked people to subscribe because you have to do that. But I spent loads of time looking at shorts and then how shorts correlate to the long form and what's driving what and where reviews and subs coming from. And you have to lean into that info and be reactive to it.

 

Great, let's talk later.

 

We're already talking. So when you think about like a social media team, your role, I might be wrong, but I don't really see like a YouTube specialist in a team, in the marketing team. Like, do you think that's important to have? Because I'm just thinking about the brands don't necessarily have one person dedicated to every single platform. It'd be amazing if they did. So if a brand wanted to start and you've got someone in the team and like was sat here saying it's long,

 

It's a long process, it's hard work, it can be expensive. What is the argument to take to their manager or to the CMO and say, I really need to dedicate some time to this because I'm going to get X at the end of it? What would be your advice?

 

Chloe (21:13.634)

I actually had this conversation yesterday and I think there's a bit of confusion between does it sit in SEO? Does it sit in content? Does it sit in social? Where does it sit in paid? Because a lot of teams run paid on Google and on YouTube. In my experience, because it's the only way I've ever done it, it sits siloed. And there's a few businesses that I work across that silo out YouTube. And the reason is I think,

 

This might not, this might be an answer that's like, it's so, it's a lot, but it's, you have to approach it so differently. Or, I mean, I've never read a social channel, but in my experience, and you know, I sit as an extension of the social team at JD, but I do think it sits siloed because you have to take into consideration, are a massive part of YouTube, content, but in a totally different way to what social is. You have to manage production teams.

 

You have to manage budgets, you have to manage SEO, you have to manage talent managers and running of the day. And it's a different, in my opinion, it's a different skillset. But I asked, you I get opinions from social, all the feed into everything that I do. Our SEO guy is gonna lead the SEO for YouTube. I talk to Pate about what works on them. it's, you've just got to collect knowledge all the time and implement that.

 

But I think it's a challenge. If I was to approach like my marketing director or whatever, I'd pull a case together of like what's working, what's the gap, what's dwindling on TV and what are the stats for YouTube and where it's going. Growth and the, you know, the reach, the potential reach of YouTube is bigger than any other platform. Like that alone is huge. And test, like set a test period out.

 

Yeah, it seems it's so under monetized for brands. So obviously SuperWeb is monetized for creators. They know how to do that. you we talked about you touched on it, like YouTube shopping. And we actually got a question here is that says you mentioned it's your strongest channel. How are you showing ROI on it? Is it through YouTube shopping or attribution? I'd love to know a little bit about where you sort of see that working for you guys, but also what your advice would be for other brands to get into it.

 

Chloe (23:33.422)

Yeah, again, I'm very lucky because our key KPIs community, we've actually changed. This is why YouTube's powerful. We've changed the whole demeanor of our online audience. JD's different to probably how you guys work in that we're retail first, which is quite unusual in 2025. And it's really interesting, but we're trying to grow our online audience and also change the sentiment of the brand.

 

because you probably know that JD's got quite a bit of a negative sentiment. But we're switching it up and YouTube's driven that just accidentally, if I'm being honest. In terms of shop and ROI, that was a question, right? YouTube is a bit behind, well, it's a lot behind the times in terms of shop. You won't get a team dedicated to you like Meta and TikTok. They do have a partner program, but they're not, not,

 

anywhere near as advanced because it is a creator first channel right now. I think that will change. The shop, can shop on there through Shopify platforms and specific platforms, but it's not the best user experience. We don't use it. So I don't know how it all works. We have spoken to them about it, but yeah, know they're compatible with Shopify websites and you can link everything on there. It's you drive click through.

 

because like TikTok's like cutting everyone out to make sure that you stay on TikTok. Instagram's quite similar, so brands who try to do any kind of affiliates is virtually impossible apart from stories, but YouTube is, everyone's up for grabs.

 

Yeah, what I will say though is if you do a lot of paid on YouTube, if you build an organic audience, that should feed a massive amount of data into your paid team. Because if you've got an engaged audience that is built organically, you know the types of, you know how they speak, you know what they're searching for. You know all of this information about them. So you should be able to tailor your creative, tie it into what you do in organically and then target them that way.

 

Chloe (25:36.654)

which is something we haven't yet done but should be doing really.

 

Are you buying ads with long form content so that the ad starts and continues to roll and it's actually one of your YouTube videos or do you create ads specifically for the content?

 

Being an ad. Great ad specifically, yeah. We should really be targeting greater channels, but it's one for the future.

 

We've mentioned quite a few different metrics in terms of what's related to YouTube. I mean, I've heard someone from YouTube say only focus on one thing when you're starting out. Do you agree with that? And if so, like, what is that one metric that brands should just purely focus on when they get started?

 

There's a few, think click through rate is obviously the first stop because people are clicking, they're not watching. Retention will teach you a lot. So it will tell you where your audience is watching to and where you're getting drop off. You can see like every little millisecond of what everyone is watching, which is so interesting. And then average percent viewed, they're the three that we look at.

 

Verity (26:40.554)

And if there's one experiment that every brand in this room should maybe test in the next six months on YouTube, what would it be?

 

Just be open to failure. think if you wanna do it and there's not a plan for YouTube, I'd definitely pitch it in and see if you can get budget to at least test it, but it does take a long period of time. But yeah, I just said be open to testing and learning, even at our level and we're quite advanced on there. We still mess up a lot, like you do. It's just like running a social channel. Well, you learn more from the failures than the wins, you know?

 

So we've got question here from Rachel. So she's asked your thoughts on brands using YouTube as a way to show their behind the scenes process. Is that an OK starting point? Kind of like a long form EGC.

 

Yeah, look, it's interesting, isn't it, to see behind the scenes. And I think what you forget when you work in brands, and especially if you live in big cities, there's so many people out there that think your world is so exciting. Like think about how many consumers you've got. They wanna know what's going on. And again, it adds that level of authenticity and realness and the people who they're actually buying from. What I would say is don't fall into the trap of telling the same story that every other brand is doing, because we see a lot of behind the scenes at the minute.

 

So I'd tell it in your way, because there are a few brands that are coming out that are going to start doing BTS and vlog style videos. But I think it's interesting for consumers to watch.

 

Paul (28:08.716)

Also, it's just, easy. It's not creative. It's like, are you, what are we filming today? Well, what are we doing today?

 

but also daytime TV, that's what it is, it's in the background, know. It's reality TV. Got one move over. Honestly.

 

Does all the great work you're doing in YouTube link back to the overall social strategy or does YouTube sit separately? You mentioned how it sits within the team but does sit within the strategy?

 

Yeah, it's one of the same. So social come to every shoe. They're part of the concepting to an extent because it is different. And then they capture content on set. So they'll do behind the scenes stuff. They'll do social first stuff with all of our talent. then we don't necessarily, unless it feels relevant for us, we don't lift their content and put it on ours unless it's a talent that feels right. But they put our stuff on theirs, yeah.

 

There's another question here is why do you think YouTube creators are more expensive talking of the talent? Is it due to legacy pricing from a decade ago or the increased effort production value needed?

 

Chloe (29:10.222)

I think it's a smaller pool of them. And in my... We work with big creators, so I might be a little bit biased on this, but I think... I think there's a few things. We've interestingly had a lot of people come to us and say, we want to be with So &So because they're a YouTuber, or we're trying to get into this pool of audience. Can we come on your channel and be with So &So?

 

So I think there's a certain value of a YouTube creator that you don't quite get with social creators. I don't think it takes value away from one or the other. I just think it's a totally different... And also to be able to capture an audience for a 20, 25 minute period of time, it's not an easy thing to do.

 

So what do mean you think that they're higher quality or that different mindset?

 

I wouldn't say high quality because there's some incredible content creators on social. But I think it's a different skill set. It's very personality led, isn't it? You want to watch someone because they can keep you entertained over a longer period of time.

 

Yeah, it seems to be that there's, because you've got the long form, there is space for ads, like, or advertorial in it, because you could be watching content and then they can be like, yeah, use Squarespace or whatever it is, and then go back to the content, the other side of it. And even though you've got the creator making the ad, it doesn't feel as, and it's in a TV format. Maybe we're watching over a TV, like, it kind of slots into it. And there's something there which crosses the authenticity of having someone you trust telling you about it, but then actually,

 

Paul (30:48.234)

it being embedded into some content you're really there for rather than swiping quickly. It's quite hard. It's like the content is an ad if it's a creator talking about something rather than ad embedded in content because you want to consume the content. So a few more here. So we have video assets for other marketing channels including social or website. Do you have any tips for repurposing specifically for YouTube?

 

Yeah, I get asked this a lot. Yes, the only thing is it needs to be a consistent cadence. YouTube won't reward your channel if you're just posting willy-nilly. And also I think it's fine to lift content, but you have to look at YouTube as you would any other channel and take the learnings and implement them to the content. And that might mean tweaking content or optimizing sometimes, but I think it's worth testing.

 

When you say consistent, like that looks very different across the different platforms. Is there like an optimum consistent time? Like once a day?

 

Three times a week. Again, it's slower. So you don't need to be posting like some brands post like four or five times on TikTok. I try with a couple of times a day to start and see where it goes. What I would say is I haven't quite figured this out yet, but you need to get the synergy right between long form and short form. A lot of brands post short form and then with a view of posting long form in six to 12 months.

 

But what you will have done is you will have built an audience that are so used to watching 60 second clips that it's so hard to then get them to concentrate on a 20 minute video. So you have to keep that in mind. Cause if you're firing out shorts with no strategy at all, you might...

 

Chloe (32:32.76)

You might trip yourself up if you wanna start doing long form later down the line.

 

Like obviously I know a lot of runs we do it, we repurpose TikTok videos on YouTube Shorts, but actually is there like an anatomy for YouTube Shorts that they should be doing instead?

 

No, not really. Again, test and learn and see what works. And it depends on what your channel and what your audience are used to. Ours is very personality led. we just, just same as Instagram, same as TikTok. It just needs that hook at the beginning and then social first stuff. So we do a lot of trend led stuff with the creators that always performs. And we just repurpose that on all platforms.

 

Bye.

 

Nice, okay, we've got one minute left and I've got a final question here which is like brand and collaboration question. Any tips on what creator insights to look out for when determine YouTube fees? Does it work on a CPM basis?

 

Chloe (33:24.622)

or YouTube specifically.

 

But I think it was like any tips and what creator insights to look out for when to determine the fees to pay them I think on the YouTube fees

 

I think it's the same as social. Again, I don't really want to speak to it too much because I don't, we work on day rates and we work a bit differently to how you would typically pay an influencer. But I've got a few friends that asked me this quite a lot, there's a lot more brands are starting to post on there. But I think again, it's relative to their audience size, their engagement rate on there. And I would price it, I'd approach it the same as you would a social channel.

 

Amazing. Thank you very much.

 

Thank you.