The “Ideas from Outside” conference Moskowitz and I spoke at opened with a panel discussion moderated by Sari Katz, Partner Manager of YouTube Canada. She assembled a panel of four very popular Canadian YouTubers. I needn’t mention them by name. One had a cooking show, two were long-time friends who created comedy programs, and the fourth was a director and producer who has his own show and creates videos for others, brands included.
They appeared similar on the outside: mid-to-late 20s, backgrounds in communications arts, especially film and video. They aim to build media brands and work with advertisers, and they are aggressively metrics-driven in their decision-making. You might think that they would be alike because we typically assume that people who share characteristics are alike. That’s the logic underlying almost all segmentation. But when we listened closely to them talk about their viewers, subscribers, ad clients, and how they went about building their businesses and brands … they were remarkably different … on the inside: There were three unique mindsets up there, We called them the Marketer, the Storytellers, and the Rugged Individualist.