YouTube Millionaires: For Cut, “Value To Our Audience Trumps Everything”

Welcome to YouTube Millionaires, where we profile channels that have recently crossed the one million subscriber mark. There are channels crossing this threshold every week, and each has a story to tell about YouTube success. Read previous installments of YouTube Millionaires here.

This installment of YouTube Millionaires is brought to you by Epoxy.

Most of the channels we feature in this column have earned a taste of viral success, but only a few have achieved it as regularly as Cut

. The creator of web series like 100 Years of Beauty and Baked has produced dozens of videos that have been heavily-trafficked on the Internet.

Cut’s tendency to release crisp, engaging videos that feature high production values and entertaining guests is paying off in a big way. The company just raised a big funding round, and it has also surpassed one million subscribers on YouTube. To celebrate the latter achievement, we spoke to Mike Gaston, Cut’s CEO.

Tubefilter: How does it feel to have one million subscribers? What do you have to say to your fans?

Mike Gaston: I’m a little ambivalent about it. In one sense it’s validating to know that over a million people went through the effort to hit the subscribe button after watching our videos. And I’m grateful to the fans that stick with us and share and comment on our work. But the number itself doesn’t mean much to me. I’m as excited about the millionth person as I was about the 40th.

TF: Cut’s videos tend to score huge view counts. What steps do you take to give your content a better chance at viral success?

MG: Each of us (the co-founders) have spent years working on what makes videos spread online. So there are loose rubrics we’ve developed that help us to quickly evaluate what the chances are of something being spreadable. That being said, we aren’t slaves to those rubrics and will often do a piece despite knowing it won’t be as successful as another because it makes sense for the brand we’re trying to develop. Views are important but “value” to our audience trumps everything.

TF: The series available on the Cut channel are very different. What would you say unites them?

MG: For one thing, we have a unique editorial vision, that begins with about 30 pages we’ve written up about the work we make now and plan to make in the future, and clearly defined guard rails that ensure we don’t drift off the path. Secondly, we are incredibly rigorous in our execution and critical of our output. It’s rare that we’re ever satisfied.

We never wanted to lean on a personality talking into a camera or a specific theme for a channel. We’ve always believed we should be able to make a video on a subject in any genre as long as it reflects our brand. I think people are beginning to recognize us by the lens through which we tackle subjects and the effort that we put into the work we create.

TF: Since Cut’s shows are based around non-fiction topics, how do you balance entertainment value with the presentation of information?

MG: I’m not really interested in providing information. Our goal has never been to “educate.” We just want to entertain. This is true even of our research videos. However, I think our research pieces (the most information-heavy of all our work) have been too prescriptive. Which is why people think we care about education/information. I’m not actually interested in answers. I’m interested in questions. I want our work to delight and provoke questions within our audience. I don’t want to tell them what to think.

The reason we have a Visual Anthropologist isn’t to pretend to be an authority, but to help us develop an interesting thesis to inform our direction. The first three videos in our 100 Years of Beauty series do not have research videos. It’s not because research wasn’t done, it’s because we didn’t know people would be interested in it. Chris Chan (our Visual Anthropologist) has been lobbying hard for us to rethink the way our research videos are constructed to better reflect the argument we use to frame our videos. Simply telling people this is why we (insert hair/makeup technique) for the 1910s, etc. is pedantic and misrepresents the thought that goes into these projects and how we want people to think of our videos.

TF: With regard to 100 Years of Beauty in particular, what sort of research do you use to discover the fashion trends of individual decades?

MG: Though we do research trends we actually begin each video project with a question, and we attempt to answer it without words. The hardest part is deciding on what that question is. The research itself is fairly simple and straightforward – a lot of time spent in libraries.

TF: What is the most amusing response you have received for Baked?

MG: “This should get an Oscar for best editing.”

TF: Racial inclusiveness is a big theme across many Cut videos. Why is that such an important quality for you guys?

MG: Two of the three co-founders are bi-racial. Diversity isn’t a gimmick for us. It reflects our reality.

TF: Do you ever have series ideas you have to scrap because they turn out to be unfeasible or unappealing for your audience?

MG: Occasionally we nix something because it’s too expensive to execute, but I’ve never killed a video because I thought it would be unappealing to our audience. I optimize for our brand and hope our audience follows us.

TF: What’s next for your channel?

MG: We have some pretty incredible projects in the works. I’m excited to show people how our lens can be applied to narrative fiction. We’re working on a collaboration with Matt Inman of The Oatmeal on an animated project and have some live action fiction projects in development.

On Deck (channels that will soon reach one million subscribers): Eat Your Kimchi, Guy Tang, Sananas

This installment of YouTube Millionaires is brought to you by Epoxy, the premier company that helps multi-platform creators and digital networks distribute videos, engage with fans, measure success, and grow their communities across the social web. Check out Epoxy’s new Sharing Studio, a place for quickly creating and distributing native social content from your YouTube channels.