K-Pop Crash Course
CLIENT: KPCC is a personal project where we make reaction videos to all things k-pop / k-drama / k-culture type stuff.
In the summer of 2021, Elaine Faye tricked her roommate (Joanne) into started a k-pop reaction channel. It first started off with Elaine and Cheyenne being the hosts of the channel and Jo, behind the camera, guiding them through k-pop. Obviously we were not experts but we were willing to learn.
With both E + Chey being music people, and Jo being an art person, we had an unique viewpoint when it came to reacting to the MV’s. A few months in, Chey decided to leave the channel and Jo moved to the front of the camera.
One night E & Jo decided to do a BTS crash course before the PTD LA concert. And that was the night K-Pop Crash Course was born. We decided to keep the channel going with just the two of us for awhile, rotating in guests from time to time.
The whole concept of our channel was that we were giving k-pop crash courses to others all the while still learning about it ourselves. Hence our tag line: We are not experts but we're learning!
Elaine announces her health diagnosis in this video. May 2022.
Our first video after Elaine’s passing. We were a hot mess. Nov 2022.
For anyone watching our channel, they would clearly see that there were two main hosts at the beginning - E & JO. We ran the channel together for almost a year before we let our viewers know about her health. In the midst of everything, Elaine had stage 4 breast cancer and was going through her second round of chemo. She had to step away as she got sicker. While Elaine was in Mexico for treatment, Allison stepped in as co-host. And together we continued our journey down the BTS rabbit hole.
Over the next few months we’d give our audience updates on Elaine and rotate guests on the channel. When Elaine passed in November 2022, we let our viewers know and they were all so kind to grieve alongside us. Our first video without her was a very emotional to say the least but we believed that k-pop had a weird little healing effect on our lives.
As we all went through some of our hardest moments, this channel gave us so much joy and so much hope. The music we discovered and the dramas that we watched and the laughter we shared - it literally added so much comfort for each one of us. And that’s what we hope to give to others as they watch our channel as well.
We did a plethora of k-pop reaction videos over the years. Here are some of the thumbnails that we designed. We’ve gone through a few iterations and A/B testing and redesigns in order to find what is most clickable.
What began as really crowded with too much text, eventually simplified to larger, clearer messaging. We tried to keep expressions big and clear so that people can know what to expect in the video.
In May 2022, we launched our Patreon. It’s a membership platform where fans of our channel could go and get early access or see exclusive content.
It took some time to strategize a way to move people from YouTube to our Patreon, but we found few methods that worked well.
We would encourage our viewers to sign up for a seven-day free trial to check out what is available on our Patreon. And hopefully while they’re there, they’ll want to sign up for a membership and stick around for more content.
Each member (we love to call them our ROOMIES) have access to exclusive reactions on Patreon, but they also have voting rights on what we watch, higher priority for requests, access to our DISCORD server, and can join us for livestreams.
They pay a premium and they get to connect with us, the creators.
In April of 2024, we launched our very first merch line with the above four products. Our branding is pretty consistent across the board so it was easy to come up with these designs. We ended up ordering a few samples and marketed them on some of our videos. It’s so much fun having a mug with our logo on it. Or to have a sweatshirt that says “ROOMIE” on the front but with the design block on the back. Not only that, the sweatshirts are so soft and comfortable. A great addition to any wardrobe!
We integrated a cohesive brand across the board - from our YouTube to the Patreon to our Shopify site. The look, the feel, the font, the messaging - they all match our brand. Even down to the hana, dul, set in our tiers.