Dispatch No. 3: A big new experiment

What's coming up the week of 2/7 and a big new experiment

Another Sunday, another round of snow!

Coco enjoying the fresh snow on this morning’s walk.

I was trying to think back on the week that was and, to be honest, I can’t remember it all that well! You’ve heard of this, right? Someone asks you what day it is and you don’t know? It’s Blursday, isn’t it?

Oh, I know what’s worth reporting! Last night I watched “The Lady Vanishes”. It’s a 1938 British mystery thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock that stars Margaret Lockwood and Michael Redgrave. A woman mysteriously disappears on a train. Or does she?! It’s got a bit of a “Twilight Zone” feel to it in places and Hitchcock’s cameo is delightful. I highly recommend it.

You’ll forgive for the short personal update this week, but there’s a great deal to cover with regard to “Future Ops” below!

What’s on tap this week?

TUESDAY: The Only 5 Dress Shirts You’ll Ever Need

I love making videos that focus on the basics of building a versatile wardrobe and this is one that I’ve had in the hopper for quite a while. I mean, the title kind of speaks for itself but I’m not just going to be talking about five different shirts. We’re going to do a little bit of a deeper dive into fabrics choices and optimal styling details (think, collar and cuff) for maximum versatility, and as you’ve come to expect, I’ve got five different outfits to illustrate each shirt I’ve chosen.

THURSDAY: Reacting To My First YouTube Video

This is going to be a good one! I actually shot this video a little more than a month ago. And what’s funny is that just last week someone commented on that video asking if I’d watched it recently and wanted to know what I thought of it and what I was saying now. That’s exactly what this video is!

Not sure I like the camera angle though. You’ll have to let me know.

And, for this audience here, one interesting thing to point out that you can look for this Thursday is that there is a bit of visual trickery going on. In fact, when I sent Ian a screenshot of the frame before I shot it, he thought I was using a wide angle lens. You’ll notice that you can see the whole computer screen in the main shot where I’m watching the video. I actually tilted the screen about 45-degrees to achieve that look, which made it interesting from my perspective while shooting it.

And beyond?

Okay, so the big news to report in content-land is that we’re going to start rolling out YouTube Shorts. If you’re not familiar with the format, it’s basically YouTube’s answer to TikTok and Instagram Reels—vertical videos under 60-seconds. You see them as they were meant to be seen on mobile only—i.e. the full vertical format—while on desktop they appear vertically within the typical 16:9 player.

Shorts (or #Shorts as you’ll see them designated on YouTube) were rolled out in the fall of last year and, to be honest, I had pretty much zero awareness of them until recently.

When it comes to adopting new methods of content creation (or platforms), I am typically either very slow to do so or completely skeptical. In terms of the latter, the conversation I always have with myself revolves around ROI. Okay, so the platform has this new thing that they’re pushing but will it be a success? Will they sunset it pretty much right after everyone whips into a frenzy to deliver something made for that particular format? Is it worth taking energy away from business as usual in order to maybe—maybe?—get something out of it?

So I’ve been doing some pretty serious thinking. And have finally decided that it’s worth giving it a shot.

Why?

First, what is there to lose? Although it’s not necessarily “easy” to produce these short videos—there’s still a healthy amount of ideation and pre-production planning that needs to go into them, not to mention the edit being even more important due to the short form delivery method—we’ve had some experience (and success) with Instagram Reels in the past so not a big leap to make creatively or executionally.

Second, the potential upside for success outweighs the “risk”. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my eight years in this industry, it’s that when a platform rolls out a new feature, they really promote it hard and prioritize it when it is in its earliest phases. While I definitely wasn’t an early adopter, based on what I’m seeing in the menswear niche, there’s an opportunity there.

Third, I view this as a fun and creative way to provide added value to the current community and potentially reach new audiences.

What?

Yeah, good question.

I can tell you that what it won’t be is repurposed content. Not from Instagram Reels. Not from older videos. While that’s definitely a “low overhead” approach, my take is that it’s a one-way ticket to pissing existing subscribers off. To me, that sends a pretty clear message to the tune of, “I care more about gaining a new audience than putting the effort into thinking about how I can provide added value to my current dedicated and loyal audience.”

So we’re actually going to be experimenting (or testing and learning, as Robin calls it) with a few different styles and topics, both to see what our audience seems to like and to determine if there’s an opportunity to push into new verticals.

As of now, that’s #OOTDs, tutorials, and cocktails.

Any other ideas or things you’d like to see?

When?

While you’ll see our first Short drop on Thursday, February 18th (filling a content gap that resulted in a sponsor deal taking longer to negotiate), our plan is to release these on Saturdays. I’m still deciding whether this is sustainable weekly, but for now plan to look out for HSS Saturday Shorts! Consider it your grown-up, style-focused upgrade from Saturday morning cartoons (if you’re old enough to remember that was a thing).

My expectations are very low. I’ve done tons of reading and watched many videos on this topic. Pretty much everyone says that you’re not going to see any type of success early on and that it in most cases—even with larger creators—the upswing happens about three to four weeks after you start rolling these things out.

I’m not an analytics expert, but I would wager that initially (assuming that YouTube doesn’t immediately start prioritizing a particular creator’s Shorts content), that feedback will be lukewarm. Especially if the majority of one’s current subscriber base typically watches on desktop. About 55% of HSS subscribers consume our content on mobile.

As with anything like this, consistency is key. So I’m planning to not think too much about it and do a more serious evaluation probably about three months from now.

In other news, Rachel was off last week. She keeps things running. We missed her.

That’s all for this week!

Stylishly Yours,

Brian