Jonathan Gavriely, Student

“I've always been into content creation and social media, it’s something I got into as a kid because, like most people my age at the time, I wanted to be a YouTuber. That didn't really work out, but recently, when COVID came around, I was left with a lot of free time and this desire to make something.

The idea for BehindtheBrands came from my passion for content creation, my interest in business, and a theory I had about educational content. From personal experience, I knew that people generally enjoy learning. Whenever someone learns something new, they tend to get excited and want to share it with everyone. However, what people do not enjoy is the process of learning and all the challenges that come with understanding something new. With that in mind, I felt like if I created educational content that was super easy to understand and removed the challenges that come with learning new things, it should do well.

The best way to describe BehindtheBrand’s content, would be explainer videos focused on business. Every week I put out at least one video focused on analyzing a certain business, explaining business related news, or sharing interesting business-related stories.

The first couple of videos I put out got around 500 views. Nothing too crazy. However, my third one, where I explained why IKEA has a restaurant and sells food, went viral with 1 million views in under a week which helped jump-start the account’s growth. Since then, I have posted a little over 50 videos and have grown the account to 126k followers.

Since the whole selling point of the account is providing business content that's super easy to understand, I spend a lot of time rewriting my scripts to ensure they don’t have any complicated terminology and that all complex topics are explained as simply as possible. There is also the added challenge of keeping the content under two minutes.

I'm currently in my third year at Schulich specializing in marketing. My courses have helped me better understand how to analyze my account’s performance as well as taught me the importance of building my own brand.

Employers seem to really like the channel too. In job interviews, they say “this is the reason why we wanted to talk to you, or this is a cool project, keep working on it”. If I could share one piece of advice, it would be to encourage everyone to go out and start sharing something they are passionate about on social media. It costs nothing and the benefits far outweigh the risks.  It can help you connect to with bunch of cool people and help provide you opportunities you wouldn't get otherwise.

Jonathan's Favourite BehindtheBrands Stories

 

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