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I think there's another aspect here that the author is missing: break expectations, but do it in a way that confirms existing biases.
It's not just "this thing people believe is wrong", but "this thing people believe is wrong, but you were never one of those people, were you? you and me, we're more clever than that". breaking expectations in a way that makes people feel stupid for having those expectations in the first place isn't going to win you an audience.
- snowboarding with the NYPD: haven't you always wanted the roads to be shut down for everybody else, and you were the only one allowed on them?
- Bike Lanes: authority figure doing something stupid, gets called out for it. everybody's got a bit of an anti-authority streak and can sympathise with this
- Make it Count. spend a big company's money on your personal travel? who wouldn't want to do that.
- Bike thief: it's easy to see how viewers would like to feel they'd be better than all the people who ignored the "bike theives"
- iPod’s Dirty Secret: doesn't everybody wish their electronics lasted longer, and harbor a suspicion that the big rich tech companies are ripping them off?
I was just going to say the same thing.
It works even better when you play up to a small group's beliefs. Or even better when you confirm something a larger group aspires to, but wants an excuse to get out of.
The bike lanes video is the perfect example.
- It plays to the belief of bikers that the city doesn't care about them and keeps ruining bike lanes. "SEE?! How difficult it is to be a biker in NYC? This is what we deal with everyday!"
- It plays to the belief of people who want to be bikers (it is a healthy hobby after all), but want a convenient excuse for it. "SEE!?! This is why I don't bike - there are obstacles everywhere!"
There's something of the hero/martyr complex in there as well ("I'm a hero because I bike to work despite all the obstacles")
Same with the iPod video. It confirms the biases of the Apple haters (and there are plenty of them) as the company being closed and anti-consumer.
I really want to snowboard with the NYPD.
There is another thing Neistat likes to portray in his video that I think makes him even more popular: The illusion of amateur.
His videos seems like they can be shot by anyone. But try skateboarding in the middle of a busy New York street with cars going in both directions while holding a heavy tripod camera on one hand, a remote on the other, and talking to the camera and saying hi to fans on the street, and finishing that narrative you started two miles ago all at the same time.
I have probably only seen 4-5 videos of his in my life but I did once see a man that look like him flying a drown around the beaches of Santa Monica. I cam back an hour later and he was still there flying a drone.
I was pretty sure it was him and followed his videos for a couple more weeks until a video of him in Santa Monica came out.
I am not into vloggers and agree most play up their amateur status but I was still impressed by the hands-on dedication he was putting into getting one shot.
It's especially impressive when you consider that for all the shots in his video where you see him come into a building or ride up and pick up the camera, he has to first go there and set up the camera. Repeating everything like that takes a lot of dedication.
It is his job. I'm not an expert on the latest tech for cameras but surely they have remote activation tech now (wifi?)? He could just set it up before he leaves and activate it when he is about to arrive?
have you ever tried leaving an expensive camera anywhere in new york? that thing would be gone in an hour
Even in his studio?
seeing as how he uses a different shot everytime of him entering his studio - your point is still moot
Don't forget carrying a smoothie too :)
But yes, that's a great point. And I think adds to my thesis too. A lot of us expect that creating videos of his quality would take a team of 3+ people holding cameras, planning production, etc. But he casually does it all himself. That surprises us. Breaks our expectations. Of course, it's taken many years and broken bones of his to get to this level of professionalism. But I never said breaking expectations was easy :)
Nerdwriter, or someone similar, made a video about Casey's amateur aesthetic.
That was very informative and eye opening regarding how much time he has put into mastering the 'amateur' aesthetic while literally doing multiple things at once, eg: Holding a 3lb camera with a gorilla pod while riding a boosted board, drinking a smoothie and having a coherent conversation towards the viewer.
Yeah, he did. It's a good one.
I think the author and commenters here are missing something. To make something viral, you have to make it addictive. To make it addictive, you have to make it rewarding. To make it more rewarding than the rest of the competition, you have to make it unique.
The fact that he's "breaking expectations" is what makes his content unique. What makes it REWARDING to watch is that it allows viewers to live vicariously in situations that they would never have the guts (for lack of a better word) to do themselves. Defying the NYPD. Proving the cops wrong. Sticking it to a big corporation like Nike. Being a thief and getting away with it. Again...sticking it to big corporations - Apple. Have you noticed that every one of these gets one over on the entities that most people feel keep them down? Nothing is more rewarding than winning, and his content lets people vicariously feel what it's like to win over the thing that they really hate. They thing that they subconsciously blame for all of their problems. The authority. The man.
This is what the author has completely missed. I could make a video where I turn on a light switch but instead the radio turns on. That breaks expectation, but it is not rewarding. If you want the viewer's reward system to fire, you need to engage their mirror neurons. You have the let them see you doing something they wish they could do. You have to get them to feel reward that they find missing in their lives. THAT is the real key to viral videos.
the living vicarious value is huge. it's not just "wouldn't have the guts to do" though. it is about not having the wealth, time, energy, or ability to do. his video portrays a life of a wealthy man who gets to have fun and behave like a kid. a dream that appeals to many people.
"How to Casey Neistadt a VLOG" by Sara Dietschy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVC6WO_SEmw
Which, put her on the map as a Vlogger.
The strategy is simple to put into words, but it is still extremely difficult to implement into practice. If it were simple to put into practice, then Neistat would not be distinguishing himself from others.
Definitely! I tried to convey that in the article: "And though it is still hard, and potentially risky, if you filter your ideas through this lens, you’ll get much more impact from your own ideas."
I totally agree. I was just telling someone else on Twitter about this topic but I have many more marketing campaign ideas that pass the smell test of "will this break expectations" but they make me stressed to pull off. They risk life, property or reputation. So yeah, they can be super difficult. And they don't just come to me overnight. The campaign I mentioned in the article took me months to execute on the way I wanted to.
Edit: And one more thing I'd add. Putting more work of ours through the filter "will this break expectations" doesn't have to have as lofty of a goal as Neistat level virality. I think most of us asking this of our blog posts, videos, apps, etc. would vastly improve the success of our work to a degree still plenty big enough for us.
You did a comedian's in cars getting coffee for tech with the npm creator right? Please do more of those with other tech people.
Not only that but Casey is also a great story teller, filmmaker and editor, they way he makes his videos are incredible. He makes mundane things look cool.
Yes, exactly. The article points out one aspect of Casey's videos, but I think it's a minor one. Casey is probably as talented as the most talented directors in Hollywood. So asking what makes them viral is like asking why a director's movies are successful. (It's a useful thing to study, but it's a difficult endeavor.)
A while back I would run affiliate offers of different variety on Facebook and I discovered something interesting. A lot of times it wasn’t about a particular spin on the subject you are trying to promote, and more about how many people like and share your comment at a continuous rate. My suspicion is that it takes a few special accounts to share content with a few more special accounts and do this just enough times for things to go viral. What do I mean by special? Accounts which have friends/followers with the same mindset who are likely to also share the content. It’s like going out in the forest and walking into 5 spider webs in a row to get really pissed. It takes a consecutive successful event chain to trigger a viral reaction.
I put this theory to the test by promoting the same exact affiliate message under the guise of some fun content several times over the course of the week, at different times of the day. Results were almost predictable. One message might go viral if shared at a time when more people were sharing as initial “seeders” (basically your content is shared quickly at first). Another exactly the same message would not take off when the seed rate was too slow (likely due to uninterested people who were shared to from likeminded people). I could get 2 out of 5 identical messages to go viral given a fast seed rate with some luck.
There's a great deal of luck involved. Casey is a curious case of someone who is not interesting, deep, gifted or talented at anything, and yet has a massive audience.
With Casey, he was doing online video, when so few people were, that anything could become a smash hit. His other hits have to do with him already being an established name.
It is not unlike Dan Bilzerian - except Dan openly admits he got very lucky to end up where he is at, and so there aren't articles being written on how to become the next Dan or use his 'poker strategy', or maybe there are, I wouldn't be surprised :)
Disagree strongly that Casey is "not interesting, deep, gifted or talented at anything". He's a professional filmmaker who did plenty of TV and commercial work (including selling an 8-episode TV series to HBO) before ever getting into YouTube.
His "secret" was bringing his experience with professional cinematography and production values and applying them to a medium (vlogging) that had historically been very much an amateur game.
I have watched a few of his videos through my partner being a bit lonely without a job since we started living in a new country without knowing anyone.
He does a great job of being conversational and mostly positive. It definitely gives lonely people a boost.
Plus he took a chance at the right time and to paraphrase Peter Thiel “why compete with the herd and try to squeeze through a tiny window? Just walk around and go through the large gate no one has noticed or thought glamorous enough”.
The world is littered with pretty good videographers, Casey is a pretty good one that walked through the big YouTube gate instead. Now their are countless sheep following suit.
You're getting down voted, but hey - I don't get it either!! The guy is utterly unremarkable and I don't get his popularity at all.
But then Jake Paul also has millions of viewers which also defies all logic IMHO!
Always someone with this shallow and dismissive explanation for someone's success.
You don't luck your way from the couch to being able to create such content and do so repeatedly. Clearly he put in his 10,000 hours to get there. The videos are very carefully edited and years of experience helps inform that. Even in the case of Dan, there was probably thousands of hours of poker that came before.
> We as a company should always grow. How about instead we start firing customers?
Joking aside, I actually do this...
We will sometimes have irrational customers and they DO impact our bottom line.
If you have customers that constantly waste your time, ask for refunds for insane reasons, complain about features you don't have and never promised to implement - just fire them.
This is one of the reasons Terms of Service exist as well. Sometimes you have a customer who tries to do something evil and you just have to fire them.
Virality seems to be correlated with things that evoke emotions. Breaking expectations can trigger emotions such as awe, shock, curiosity and anger. Other things go viral too, such as things that make us laugh or make us feel happy. To focus on just breaking expectations is missing the point.
Are people so obsessed with monetary success that they'll sacrifice the joy of programming and computer science to watch Casey Neistat's vlog four times in a row? I guess my priorities are totally out of order.
I personally loathe sleazy marketing and the burlesque tonic people like Neistat feed to the public. It's an embarrassment that his name makes it to the front page of HN, when the post about XDP I was reading early today still has half the points. We're completely obsessed with the wrong things.
1) Casey's a great storyteller, filmmaker, and success. Just like anyone else who reads a book 4 times. Or practices a programming problem over and over again. I study how he accomplishes things over and over again.
2) As for priorities, I've been a software engineer since 1999 (CTO of two YC companies, W06 and S11). And the biggest thing holding me back? Not enough people using the things I make. You express as much with the XDP article. So I've realized I need to get a lot better at spreading my ideas than just programming them. Build it and they won't come.
3) Somehow I got good watching TV in the background while I program. Got a lot of practice doing things like math homework in front of the TV as a kid. I built Draft (http://draftin.com) the writing software while I watched West Wing in the background for like the 10th time. Some people like going to cafes. Listening to music. I like putting on inspiring/fun TV that I don't have to think a lot about. I can't do this with cerebral shows.
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I don't usually reply to comments like these because it came across almost like a personal attack? You'll lose it when I tell you, one of my favorite pastimes is just watching Sesame Street with my kid :) instead of programming.
Who cares what I do with my time? It's my time. I don't play golf. I don't go out. I don't paint. What I do do though in my free time is write, make movies, and look for inspiration everywhere.
But I do hope the above did shed some light on why I think writing the article above was important to me and why it's subject matter I bother with at all beyond just programming.
> Are people so obsessed with monetary success that they'll sacrifice the joy of programming and computer science to watch Casey Neistat's vlog four times in a row? I guess my priorities are totally out of order.
Alternative take:
Programming is a job, and an often frustrating one at that. I could be be programming all day, and every bit could help push my career (and financial success) forward... but I'd rather not be obsessed with monetary success, and instead choose to relax to video or two of whimsical goofball doing his thing.
And I say this as someone who has contributed an awful lot to open source.
I'm personally motivated by computer science for its own sake. I don't understand the viewpoint that it's a path to a monetary reward. I am incredibly lucky that someone pays me for it, gives me free snacks, and does my dry cleaning, but before that I was just as happy in grad school eating ramen, uncovering the mysteries of computation.
I see Neistat as junk food, empty calories designed to keep us addicted to that which gives us no nourishment. What relaxes me is getting to code on my own time, without deadlines. I don't care if anyone uses my code, I do it for myself.
Well, maybe his strategies can be applied to getting XDP more attention. I think that's the driving interest here.
> I personally loathe sleazy marketing and the burlesque tonic people like Neistat feed to the public.
Can you expand on this? From what I've seen (which isn't much so could be missing something) it seems a lot more authentic than most.
> Can you expand on this?
Certainly, the last video I saw of Neistat was titled "weird flex but ok", and was captioned with a picture of him holding his fingers in a manner suggestive of a small penis.
I don't think promoting XDP with that same tactic would go over quite as well.