One camera. One person. One game changed.

If you don't know who Casey Neistat is you must have been living under a rock or at least not up to date with what is happening on YouTube and in the video content world.

With a basic consumer level camera in hand Casey started making videos and uploading them to YouTube. After about 5 years he had 500,000 followers. Then he shifted gears and started posting daily videos, it was then, in a short period of time (about 5 months) he saw his subscribers rocket up to 1,000,000.

Today Casey has 8,743,318 subscribers and as I write this his YouTube channel has been viewed 2,027,543,178 times. Yes, over 2 billion times and growing.

Casey kicked off his YouTube videos using an affordable consumer level camera, today he still uses a consumer level camera - a Canon 6D (retail price - about $1,600). While many other video makers are using pro cameras costing anywhere from $10,000 to an Alexa for about $35,000 and more.

What he showed was it is not about the expensive gear, it's about the story and the engagement.

He is one guy, with one camera, making one video at a time and doing it often.

Brands also took notice and work directly with Casey, bypassing the agency process, those brands include Samsung and Mercedes-Benz.

Casey showed it can be done, he led by example. Now there are many other video content creators out there with popular YouTube channels. Casey opened the door and many lined up to walk through it.

To further prove the game changing mind of Casey, he started up a video based social media app called BEME, the app suffered due to the stiff competition of SnapChat and Instagram Stories, but that didn't stop CNN from buying BEME and securing the mind and ideas of Casey for $25 million.

Now, more thane ever, video and video content is imperative to a brand's presence in a cluttered media space. The humble TV commercial may be slipping into history but that does not spell the end of moving images, far from it.

The big difference between a TV commercial and a piece of video content is that one (TV commercial) can take months to come to life and the other (video content) can be conceived, made, and broadcast in a day. Content at the speed of now.

We are living in an age of immediacy, people have a media device in their hands most of the day and they want to be informed, entertained and educated right now, brands that don't get that will suffer the most. I recently spoke about this in a podcast I was on, you can listen to that here.

There are now endless opportunities for brands to create and make content for their audiences. Where once they had to buy media time on broadcast and cable TV they can now connect directly on YouTube, which is of course a free platform.

Today anyone can be a media production company of one and brands can also do the same.

It's yet again a sign of the times thanks to technology and social media channels. Content being made for brands was once the sole territory of advertising agencies, but not any more. There are many challengers out there now, much more competition.

But many of these content creators don't have or even need fancy offices, or even any staff. Many of them are simply individuals with a camera in hand and an idea in mind.

Rodd

I'm a Creative Director / Writer / Strategist / Thinker and a bit more. I work with clients/brands directly and with agencies and production companies. I also teach creative thinking and idea generation to groups and individuals. You can read more of my LinkedIn musings here. You can also find me on Twitter,  Instagram and on Facebook. Or drop me an email – [email protected]

Words Copyright Rodd Chant 2018

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