Equals Three ~ Ray William Johnson | Research

After seeing the Topical Waffle video, Nisserin mentioned a similar type of video made by YouTuber Ray William Johnson. I then decided to go off and some research on it, to help us for the inspiration of our project.

After watching the first '=3' video, I picked out some similarities and differences compared to 'Topical Waffle'.

Johnson started posting videos on his self-named YouTube channel in April 2009. The Equals Three series contained Johnson adding comments and jokes over viral videos. The channel was the first out of all channels on YouTube to reach 5 million subscribers in 2011. He started producing this content in his apartment, but then got signed to 'Maker Studios' [a YouTube management company] in the same year. Unfortunately, at the end of 2012, Johnson left Maker Studios due to some complications, and this led him to create his own studios.

In 2013, the sad news came, that Johnson was no longer going to be carrying on with this series so he could focus on other projects. At the same sort of time, the channel had over 10 million subscribers and 2.6 billion total views. The show then returned in July 2014 with Robby Motz as the host, and in 2015 Motz was replaced by Carlos Santos. When the presenter changed, it caused a decrease in the amount of views due to the audience feeling concerned that the brand would go down hill.

The audience were engaged with not only the videos but also the brand itself, which leads me to believe that the brand needs to be strong and consistent for it to receive views. With the amount of views each Equals Three video has, it's fairly clear that people enjoy watching others react to videos, and this is something we want to bring to our own videos.
With this research we know it's important to stick to our brand and keep being consistent with the promo of the brand. We want to reach out to a multiple variety of different people so we will be well-known and stand out against the other student news channels.