There is this young South Korean and African American couple on Youtube that is as fascinating as they come.
Jin is an upcoming rapper whereas Juice is a linguist/teacher.
It all started with me reading a raw and somewhat raunchy tale of how they met in South Korea while Juice was studying there and before I knew it, I was tumbling down the rabbit hole and binge watching ALL of their stuff.
In today’s overly communicated world where one barely gets a listen if you don’t catch their attention in 3 seconds or less, these two young people have managed to do what many a Youtube veteran can barely dream of.
From an audience of 2000 this January, they have managed to grow an international following of almost 400k subscribers. Every video they post gets at least 1000,000 views and more than 1,000 comments. Some videos go as far as garnering over 2.5 million views and 100,000 plus comments.
What’s more, you can tell that most of their subscribers are so supportive to the extent that they are actively encouraging each other to watch Youtube Ads without skipping. The sentiment is so that Jin and Juice can earn more money and buy land to build a house for their 8 children. (Well, they have 1 now, another on the way and apparently plan on having 8 in total. Legends, huh? )
As a result, they recently were able to buy a car purely with earnings from Youtube. Additionally, every time they post a new video, the response is immediate with most noting how excited they get on receiving new post notifications.
Cue in Ruth the Strategist.
I decided to investigate why these two were this successful and find out why many a Youtuber with clearly more sophisticated resources are not half as successful.
The answer came in pretty fast. And here are a couple of reasons why:
- Both Jin and Juice, (and now their newborn son), are downright fascinating. Their storytelling leaves no room for boredom.
- Their ability to become comfortable in their own skin (playfully unscripted) and being themselves despite bordering on cringey at times is simply refreshing. In fact, most of their viewers love this about them and constantly commend them on it.
- What they represent is a possibility of a successful romantic and healthy relationship between people from two different races that are not always seen together. They are definitely perpetuating the ongoing underground “blasian movement” so to speak.
- With the advent of Kdramas and partly Kpop, there is an audience that is interested in finding out the reality of an “Oppa Culture”. This is as a result of many a Korean Drama portraying South Korean men as overly romantic and quite frankly the perfect men/boyfriends/husbands to ever exist. This couple gives this audience an opportunity to take a peek from the outside.
Quite notably, I also realized that they did not start with any fancy equipment so to speak. You can literally see their evolution from the quality of the cameras they used to film their first videos at the beginning of the year up to their most recent much better cameras.
Now, this article is not intended to advice you to blindly mimic Jin and Juice’s approach in everything they are doing.
It is intended to point out the difference between a fascinating brand from a cookie cutter one that’s used by the masses.
This case study clearly points out how the usage of the most hi-tech equipment doesn’t guarantee a highly engaged audience.
For instance, Jin and Juice do not have a website like some of their most accomplished counterparts. They are yet to get a sponsorship deal though the audience is clearly lobbying for them. As it is, they are only just getting started on their personal branding assets.
However, in reality, they have already done the most important work that many a Youtuber has failed to do. (get a highly engaged audience).
They already have what breaks or makes a personal brand safely “in the bag”. (a raving fanbase).
In truth, a personal brand is not impactful due to its grandiose looking websites, or the logos, or the podcasts or the photo shoots or the speaking engagements or books or whatever else your personal branding expert will tell you.
The most important thing still remains to be a tribe without which you are left with crickets.
Realistically, the main reason why you are building your personal brand in the first place is not to influence yourself but rather to influence others, right? You build a personal brand because you want to differentiate yourself and stand out from the sea of “me too’s”, right? It is not an inner peace project as I always like to put it, right?
Without a clear understanding of the audience you want to impact, rushing to build a brand is rather pointless. This should be the first step in any truly influential personal branding project.
Only then can you actively build an impactful brand. Only when you know their values, beliefs and their interests, can you craft stories that move them.
Only then can you build a personal brand that fascinates them beyond mere interest. Only then can you strategically develop a distinctive voice that can move them to go to war for and with you.
And this also applies to aspiring C-level executives. To move boulders from your path to promotion or industry recognition, you need to influence other people. Just focusing on vanity metrics alone won’t do it.
Now, your guess is as good as mine in terms of whether Jin and Juice were actively formulaic when they first started building their audience.
Chances are there were lucky enough to stumble upon an unsatisfied audience which they then capitalised on using the other thing that all influential figures seem to possess. Charisma! And this, they ooze!
We will talk about this in detail in a future post.
In the meantime, should you wish to have a peek at Jin and Juice’s Youtube vlogs, go here. I would suggest watching their gender mix-up Q&A after the birth of their child for a hearty laugh or more.