Intro
In May of 2022 we were approached by Daily Stoic to help them in their goal of reaching a million subscribers. At the time they were working on creating a consistent flow of content for their channel, creating content that was very story/narrative oriented. One of our goals in partnering with them was to develop the story that was being told through our post-production work. We wanted to use music, SFX, and amazing visuals to compliment these very emotional videos. We wanted each video to feel like some sort of a mini-documentary, with every video we wanted to take viewers on an emotional journey. When we originally partnered with them, their content was quite sporadic and disjointed, so we wanted to really aid in helping people come to know what the ‘Daily Stoic’ brand meant when it comes to their YouTube content.
The content is also very motivating, inspirational and developmental and so a big goal of ours was to compliment the narrative being told with phenomenal visual storytelling work that would really help to drive home the message of the content. These videos stood out from most of our existing content as well in that whilst most of our content was narratively oriented in some way, these videos were purely narrative/storyline oriented for the most part, and so it really gave us that freedom to explore how we could develop and use various different aspects of a filmmakers toolbox to create some epic feeling videos that felt more like mini-documentaries, than motivational YouTube videos.
Approach
We set out in the first month to establish a visually consistent theme, understanding their existing style. Their brand already had quite a well-established feel to the videos and we didn’t want to change that entirely, but at the same time one of our initial goals included making the visual side a lot more engaging, we wanted the videos to feel like they flowed better, and that the text/graphical part also fit well in the greater picture of the story itself, and in their brand as well.
Daily Stoic and Ryan Holiday already have a huge platform, and a well-established Brand, Ryans books are global bestsellers and so we wanted to really match the quality of his content and the insights he has on life, living it well, and Stoicism in equally impressive video production that felt on par with Ryans insights.
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A clear hook on every video - Daily Stoic loved using a ‘stinger’ at the start of their content, so we sought to make sure we used a potent clip from the video that would engage viewers and keep them watching.
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Consistency - We wanted to build consistency into the videos, from the narrative standpoint, to the visuals, b-roll and music. Every video should have that consistent feel and should evoke real emotion and life-change.
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Branding - We wanted to build upon Daily Stoic’s already established content style and thematics. Recognizing that we could adapt, change and improve on certain elements, but we still wanted to keep the classic ‘Daily Stoic’ vibe the same vibe that their audience had come to know and love.
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Pacing - The pacing of these videos is absolutely vital to keeping the audience engaged, these are more classical narrative stories we were creating, and so a deep understanding or what actually makes a film a good film was absolutely vital to the success of this content. We needed to show narrative arcs, a hero’s journey, real substantive differences in pacing in these videos and so there should be big differences in the feel and vibe of different sections of each video.
Growth
Another major goal in our partnership was growth. We wanted these videos to not only strike a chord with the audience, but for new viewers to be truly wowed and inspired by the content. Our hope was that someone who watched one of Ryan’s videos would go down a bit of a rabbit-hole and binge many of his videos. The videos themselves are made in a bingable way, they’re created as video-insights into the human condition and we wanted the videos themselves to feel bingable as well, so consistency in quality was really essential to ensuring people were engaged throughout.
Challenges
Along the road we found that the videos would take enormous amounts of time to edit. Ryan had built up a huge collection of b-roll clips of himself doing different activities and finding appropriate b-roll clips to add on the a-roll took quite a long time. It also took a little while for us to figure out a brand and style approach that meshed the old direction with the new direction well. The first video we created in partnership with them performed really well, but we also had quite a hard time developing and creating that consistency in the projects we worked on. Some videos seemed to perform well, gathering 100,000+ views quite quickly, whereas others seemed to taper out well-before that marker. With the goal of having the channel really take off, it was quite frustrating having some videos do so much better than others.
To combat this, we continued to focus on improving the actual production of the videos. Improving on the hooks, the narrative, the sound design, soundtracks and so on. We also worked on b-roll, so instead of using just plain b-roll shots of Ryan we tried to incorporate more clips, images from old paintings and videos in hope of creating a more engaging and relatable feel. Something important we sought to ensure is that b-roll enhances the story being told. So showing insights into what Ryan was saying with our visuals was an awesome way for us to engage and re-engage the audience, and also show the audience that Ryan was an expert in his field by referencing quotes, articles, books and insights he would share from history or culture.
Results
In just under a year working with the Daily Stoic team, we went from around 400,000 subscribers through to nearly 1.64 million subscribers. Together with the rest of their team we’ve tripled the audience in less than a year, and the monthly average viewership from the time we first partnered with Daily Stoic has gone from around 1,600,000 views per month to over 4,700,000. The growth has been incredible. Many of our videos have performed really well and since partnering with them the channel has grown from just under 30,000,000 views to nearly 75,000,000. It has been an absolutely awesome opportunity to work with Ryan and the team, they are so easy to work with and it’s easy to see why they’ve seen so much success, not just in the media space but in a whole range of areas.
Working with such a talented team and having their insights and ideas with the content has also helped us to level up our game and given us a deeper knowledge into the inner-workings of YouTube and what it takes to build a successful channel that performs. So grateful to be able to partner with him, and it’s been awesome seeing the success so far, and really looking forward to seeing what success may arrive in the future as well hopefully. All signs pointing upward so far though and we’re just happy to be along for the ride.
