With a background in content and creative direction, Billy Chester knows how to weave a narrative. Here he discusses how he took lessons from his past, other creators, and data to build controlled virality.
I'm going to tell you a story. A story of how I took my company from zero views on YouTube to over 590 million views, in six months.
I live in Stockholm, and in 2017 I started a pocket knife company called WESN (which stands for West, East, South, North because every direction and destination, WESN can go there). Little did I know it was going to be one of the hardest marketing ventures of my life. That’s because pocket knives are basically prohibited to market — any marketing platform you can think of, you can't run ads.
So from day one, we had to be creative, think differently, and seek every opportunity to promote our brand in non-traditional ways.
In 2022, I discovered a brand selling swords through social media. With 500K subscribers and millions of views on its ads, I was intrigued. Could WESN do the same?
1. Becoming a creator, a knife-changing experience
We knew we wanted to build a YouTube presence, although we weren’t sure where to start. At the time I had a marketing team of one: Ethan.
“As the marketing guy, it made sense for me to take this project on and become the ‘face’ of the brand,” says Ethan Thompson, WESN’s head of marketing and creative. “Starting to create content from scratch was as daunting as it was exciting. We got to tap into a type of creativity we hadn’t elsewhere — throwing every idea that came to mind at the wall and seeing what stuck. We had to figure out how to make content that our audience would enjoy and relate to, while still trying to sell our product.”
We decided to do a six-month trial to see if Ethan could become a YouTube creator. If it didn't work, we would bail. We committed to making one video every single day. Not only to learn how to create content, but also to discover what our audience wanted to see.
Our first attempt was, quite honestly, embarrassing:
Yet everyone starts somewhere. Ethan kept at it, producing content daily and analysing the data, hoping to find audience insights which would unlock what our viewers really wanted to see.
Key takeaway: Don’t just publish videos on YouTube because it’s on your to-do list, become a content creator. Allow one member of your team to become the expert. Commit to 60 days of creating content and really look at what is working, and what isn’t.
2. Cutting through the data and sharpening our ads
Many marketers think virality is pure luck, but there's a science to success. We studied creators who had achieved "controlled virality" by being analytical and strategic. It's not just about being a brand; it's about building a persona.
YouTube provides you with unique data and audience insights within the platform itself; it wants you to succeed. And that’s where we started studying data — retention, swipe-away rates, likes, and audience niches — to help us form the best strategy.
“These metrics are key to making it on YouTube,” continues Thompson. “In the heap of videos we uploaded, we slowly learned where people swiped away from our videos, what they liked and didn’t, and what kept people watching to the end. Using data from tools like audience retention reports allowed us to explore how well different moments of our video held viewers' attention. As we looked at these stats, we tried new things, with the goal to improve each time.”
Next thing you know, our channel has 60 videos, and we crossed our first landmark of 1 million views. And the craziest thing was, in one day, WESN also sold out of our top-selling pocket knife. We couldn't believe it; we were actually doing it!
Key takeaway: Analyse every video's data and aim to improve each subsequent ad. The Content tab in YouTube analytics gives you a summary of how your audience finds and interacts with your content, as well as what content your audience watches. Whilst the Engagement section gives you a summary of how long your audience is watching your videos for and key moments for audience retention.
3. Tell Shaq-sized stories and listen to feedback
Five months into our six-month journey, we had an idea for an April Fool's joke. We ordered a pocket knife 10 times bigger than our standard, unfortunately it arrived two weeks late.
Ethan had the idea to post a video about how our factory had made a huge mistake. To our surprise, it amassed hundreds of thousands of views. And what stood out were the comments. We saw thousands of comments within hours of it being uploaded, including from a lot of people wanting to see this knife in the hands of basketball legend Shaquille O'Neal, saying the huge knife is“Shaq-sized”.
The problem was, we had no way to get it to O'Neal. However, we did have a YouTube channel, so Ethan made more videos asking our audience for help:
The series took on a life of its own. And finally, the man himself came through.
“It was one early morning I woke up and saw Billy had called me four or five times,” says Thompson. “It was then I saw it, a direct message from Shaq. He’d seen our videos and wanted to have his knife. We saw he’d be in Paris in a couple weeks and agreed to meet there — giving our already Shaq-sized story another exciting chapter.”
The truth was, we didn’t know how the story would end when we started. But along our journey, we learned how to build an audience — by listening to what they want.
And it’s not just subscribers or views we’re growing with this approach, we've seen upwards of 3.5X revenue increase over the same period, too. This revenue growth is directly linked to our strategy due to increased brand awareness created by our videos, and the clear calls to action.
Key takeaway: Listen to your audience — even if that means trawling through hundreds, or even thousands of comments on your videos — and create the content they are asking you for. Follow the story to the end, and when you have a good template for your storytelling, repeat:
The journey from zero to viral wasn't easy, but it was incredibly rewarding. We learned to think like YouTubers, be agile, and answer our audience's requests. If we could do it with a small team, anyone can.
