For industry veteran Ryan Hashemi, brands commonly approach YouTube in two different ways, neither of which is effective: either outsourcing production to traditional agencies with limited YouTube expertise or attempting to build in-house teams without a clear strategy or understanding of the platform.
“The brands that I think have incredible impact on the world, incredible stories to tell because their product is actually really great—I would go to their YouTube channels and it would be complete garbage,” says Ryan. “YouTube is the most powerful platform by far. The audience is stickier, they’re more engaged, there’s a community. You can convert your audience significantly better over time.”
After helping scale Jubilee Media to 14 million subscribers and 5 billion views in seven years, Ryan would know. Under his guidance, the company developed a format-focused approach to YouTube content that differed from industry trends. Jubilee’s social experiment formats—exploring “what happens if” scenarios where different people were brought together—resonated deeply with audiences during polarized times.
Despite this success, however, Ryan eventually found himself at a crossroads. “Over time, it felt like our focus on mission decreased,” he reflects. “We’re building and scaling a company. It’s a for-profit company, and if you’re in the media space, the biggest driver of your profit is how many views you get.”
This tension between mission and metrics became a source of internal debate. While Ryan advocated for doubling down on Jubilee’s mission as a differentiator, he felt the company was increasingly chasing viewership at the expense of its original purpose.
Hence, Ryan founded Snowball in March 2024 to shift the focus back to content and address the gap between brand investment and audience attention. The company works with major brands across industries—from B2B SaaS companies to manufacturers—building their internal capabilities to create YouTube content that audiences actually want to watch.
Bridging Corporate and Creator Worlds: The Snowball Approach
Rather than producing content for brands, Snowball engages with clients for 12-18 months to build their internal YouTube capabilities from the ground up. The process begins with a thorough discovery phase—a two to three-hour deep call with the brand team to understand their industry, competitive set, target audience, and objectives.
“Once we do that, then we confirm who we feel they need, the type of person we think they need, the creatives, and we immediately move to hiring,” Ryan explains. Snowball examines hundreds or thousands of creative candidates, stress-testing them through portfolio reviews and challenges before presenting top recommendations to brand partners.
Simultaneously, Snowball develops a content roadmap—a slate of shows and formats tailored to the brand’s goals and mission. After the team is assembled and the roadmap is finalized, Snowball leads the creative execution, initially focusing solely on creating content people love before gradually incorporating business objectives.
“The first six or seven months of engagement, there’s only one focus: to make content people love,” Ryan notes. “After forming an audience, we start thinking about unlocking business objectives and leveraging this audience to drive some business impact.”
As the engagement progresses, Snowball gradually transfers leadership to the internal team until they can operate independently. “Towards the end, once the team has gone through so many repetitions of making content and us pushing them and leading them and guiding them, we start to lift our foot off the gas pedal for us leading, and we let them lead to see if anything breaks,” he explains.
This transfer of knowledge is central to Snowball’s value proposition. As Ryan puts it, “We get them to the point where they know everything we know. And at that point, we become optional.”
Talent Philosophy: Storytellers Over YouTube Experts
As Ryan points out, Snowball doesn’t prioritize the YouTube experience when hiring creative talent for its brand partners.
“Most media companies on YouTube, when they try to hire, they look for people who call themselves YouTube experts or creatives who have some YouTube experience,” he explains. “We hire the exact opposite.”
Snowball seeks exceptional storytellers—often filmmakers or commercial directors—who may have no YouTube experience at all. “You watch their content and you feel emotions, you feel moved by what they’ve made. They’re very good at telling a story,” Ryan says. “That is much harder to teach than teaching what makes things work on YouTube.”
Many of these storytellers are drawn to YouTube as traditional media changes. “Hollywood is changing. Many people are out of jobs. The industry’s changing,” Ryan notes. “And so there’s a hunger to learn this new frontier, which is YouTube.”
Snowball’s team, currently at 13 people, consists primarily of what Ryan calls “YouTube legends” with extensive platform experience. “Every creative on the Snowball team is like a YouTube legend,” he says. “And that’s maybe the biggest constraint to our scaling is finding all of these experts.”
The company currently accepts only two new clients per month, with plans to gradually increase its capacity. Approximately 90% of Snowball’s clients come through inbound inquiries generated by Ryan’s LinkedIn and X posts, with formal sales efforts just beginning to scale further.
Transforming Brand Marketing Through Creator Principles
The approach Ryan advocates applies creator economy practices to brand marketing, focusing on building direct relationships with the audience rather than relying solely on interruptive advertising.
“Right now, the way brands try to reach customers is through commercials or ads that they think are good,” Ryan explains. “They make content and then they force that content in front of people, so they spend a lot of money making commercial content and then have to spend a lot more money to actually distribute that content in front of people who would rather not see it.”
This traditional approach becomes increasingly expensive over time as customer acquisition costs rise and ad effectiveness diminishes. By contrast, Ryan argues that organic, audience-focused content offers key advantages: “With organic, the distribution compounds over time. It becomes cheaper over time, and it’s a compelling competitive advantage because you have an owned audience and a community.”
The industry-agnostic nature of Snowball’s approach has attracted a diverse range of clients, with B2B SaaS companies comprising their three largest accounts. “Most people, when they think that, they’re like, ‘What would they do on YouTube?’ That’s strange, but it’s actually the content I’m most excited about,” Ryan shares. “I’m very excited to prove to people that it doesn’t matter what industry you’re in. There are incredible stories you can tell that still will reach your target audience and also get them very interested in your product.”
A key difference in Snowball’s methodology is its emphasis on “packaging”—the thumbnail and title that determine whether viewers will click on the content. “The biggest pitfall I’ve seen most brands—well, honestly, anybody creating content—they come up with an idea and they say, ‘Oh, this seems like a really good video,'” Ryan observes. “And then they go and make that video. Before uploading, YouTube asks, ‘What’s your thumbnail and title gonna be?’ And then they scramble last minute.”
Snowball reverses this process entirely. “If you cannot think about how this awesome idea that you have in your head in less than one second is very interesting to someone to click, it’s not a good video,” Ryan states. “We don’t even make videos that we think are awesome. However, if we can’t come up with a packaging, thumbnail, and title that make it a must-watch, it’s just not worth our time.”
The Mission and Future of Snowball
As Snowball completed its first year in operation, Ryan’s priorities for the company’s growth are clear. “The most important thing is case studies for us,” he states. “The team is entirely focused on how to build a portfolio of epic case studies. Anytime we talk about a case study, we get floods of interest.”
As the founder shares, Snowball is growing faster than all of his previous ventures combined. However, the company is deliberately limiting its growth to ensure quality and build repeatable frameworks. “We are setting these limits of two clients a month right now to focus more on building these case studies and giving each partner the attention and time it needs,” Ryan explains.
The company’s larger mission transcends its own growth. “It sounds ambitious, but we want to transform how the biggest brands in the world think about marketing,” Ryan says. “I want the world to start thinking about brands as studios, as storytellers, and their bar for success is how good they can tell stories and how much they can build a relationship and an audience that they own as a brand.”
This vision suggests a meeting point between brand marketing and creator principles, where major companies function as content studios, building direct relationships with audiences through storytelling rather than interruptive advertising.
“Five years from now, I want the biggest brands in the world to feel as though the most important marketing effort they should be focused on is telling organic stories that captivate millions of an audience and build a deep community for them,” Ryan declares.
His message about YouTube’s importance is clear: “Having been on all the social platforms for the past 15 years, YouTube is the only platform that, year over year, has consistently gotten stronger. It’s the number one streamed and watched platform on every single device, including TV.”
Ryan believes brands must recognize this shift in consumer behavior and creator aspirations. His final message to brands is both a warning and an invitation: “You have to know that’s where the mind of your future is. The brands need to wake up.”
While YouTube draws over 2.7 billion monthly active users and ranks as the most-watched streaming platform across all devices, most corporate YouTube channels receive minimal viewership and engagement.
For industry veteran Ryan Hashemi, brands commonly approach YouTube in two different ways, neither of which is effective: either outsourcing production to traditional agencies with limited YouTube expertise or attempting to build in-house teams without a clear strategy or understanding of the platform.
“The brands that I think have incredible impact on the world, incredible stories to tell because their product is actually really great—I would go to their YouTube channels and it would be complete garbage,” says Ryan. “YouTube is the most powerful platform by far. The audience is stickier, they’re more engaged, there’s a community. You can convert your audience significantly better over time.”
After helping scale Jubilee Media to 14 million subscribers and 5 billion views in seven years, Ryan would know. Under his guidance, the company developed a format-focused approach to YouTube content that differed from industry trends. Jubilee’s social experiment formats—exploring “what happens if” scenarios where different people were brought together—resonated deeply with audiences during polarized times.
Despite this success, however, Ryan eventually found himself at a crossroads. “Over time, it felt like our focus on mission decreased,” he reflects. “We’re building and scaling a company. It’s a for-profit company, and if you’re in the media space, the biggest driver of your profit is how many views you get.”
This tension between mission and metrics became a source of internal debate. While Ryan advocated for doubling down on Jubilee’s mission as a differentiator, he felt the company was increasingly chasing viewership at the expense of its original purpose.
Hence, Ryan founded Snowball in March 2024 to shift the focus back to content and address the gap between brand investment and audience attention. The company works with major brands across industries—from B2B SaaS companies to manufacturers—building their internal capabilities to create YouTube content that audiences actually want to watch.
Bridging Corporate and Creator Worlds: The Snowball Approach
Rather than producing content for brands, Snowball engages with clients for 12-18 months to build their internal YouTube capabilities from the ground up. The process begins with a thorough discovery phase—a two to three-hour deep call with the brand team to understand their industry, competitive set, target audience, and objectives.
“Once we do that, then we confirm who we feel they need, the type of person we think they need, the creatives, and we immediately move to hiring,” Ryan explains. Snowball examines hundreds or thousands of creative candidates, stress-testing them through portfolio reviews and challenges before presenting top recommendations to brand partners.
Simultaneously, Snowball develops a content roadmap—a slate of shows and formats tailored to the brand’s goals and mission. After the team is assembled and the roadmap is finalized, Snowball leads the creative execution, initially focusing solely on creating content people love before gradually incorporating business objectives.
“The first six or seven months of engagement, there’s only one focus: to make content people love,” Ryan notes. “After forming an audience, we start thinking about unlocking business objectives and leveraging this audience to drive some business impact.”
As the engagement progresses, Snowball gradually transfers leadership to the internal team until they can operate independently. “Towards the end, once the team has gone through so many repetitions of making content and us pushing them and leading them and guiding them, we start to lift our foot off the gas pedal for us leading, and we let them lead to see if anything breaks,” he explains.
This transfer of knowledge is central to Snowball’s value proposition. As Ryan puts it, “We get them to the point where they know everything we know. And at that point, we become optional.”
Talent Philosophy: Storytellers Over YouTube Experts
As Ryan points out, Snowball doesn’t prioritize the YouTube experience when hiring creative talent for its brand partners.
“Most media companies on YouTube, when they try to hire, they look for people who call themselves YouTube experts or creatives who have some YouTube experience,” he explains. “We hire the exact opposite.”
Snowball seeks exceptional storytellers—often filmmakers or commercial directors—who may have no YouTube experience at all. “You watch their content and you feel emotions, you feel moved by what they’ve made. They’re very good at telling a story,” Ryan says. “That is much harder to teach than teaching what makes things work on YouTube.”
Many of these storytellers are drawn to YouTube as traditional media changes. “Hollywood is changing. Many people are out of jobs. The industry’s changing,” Ryan notes. “And so there’s a hunger to learn this new frontier, which is YouTube.”
Snowball’s team, currently at 13 people, consists primarily of what Ryan calls “YouTube legends” with extensive platform experience. “Every creative on the Snowball team is like a YouTube legend,” he says. “And that’s maybe the biggest constraint to our scaling is finding all of these experts.”
The company currently accepts only two new clients per month, with plans to gradually increase its capacity. Approximately 90% of Snowball’s clients come through inbound inquiries generated by Ryan’s LinkedIn and X posts, with formal sales efforts just beginning to scale further.
Transforming Brand Marketing Through Creator Principles
The approach Ryan advocates applies creator economy practices to brand marketing, focusing on building direct relationships with the audience rather than relying solely on interruptive advertising.
“Right now, the way brands try to reach customers is through commercials or ads that they think are good,” Ryan explains. “They make content and then they force that content in front of people, so they spend a lot of money making commercial content and then have to spend a lot more money to actually distribute that content in front of people who would rather not see it.”
This traditional approach becomes increasingly expensive over time as customer acquisition costs rise and ad effectiveness diminishes. By contrast, Ryan argues that organic, audience-focused content offers key advantages: “With organic, the distribution compounds over time. It becomes cheaper over time, and it’s a compelling competitive advantage because you have an owned audience and a community.”
The industry-agnostic nature of Snowball’s approach has attracted a diverse range of clients, with B2B SaaS companies comprising their three largest accounts. “Most people, when they think that, they’re like, ‘What would they do on YouTube?’ That’s strange, but it’s actually the content I’m most excited about,” Ryan shares. “I’m very excited to prove to people that it doesn’t matter what industry you’re in. There are incredible stories you can tell that still will reach your target audience and also get them very interested in your product.”
A key difference in Snowball’s methodology is its emphasis on “packaging”—the thumbnail and title that determine whether viewers will click on the content. “The biggest pitfall I’ve seen most brands—well, honestly, anybody creating content—they come up with an idea and they say, ‘Oh, this seems like a really good video,'” Ryan observes. “And then they go and make that video. Before uploading, YouTube asks, ‘What’s your thumbnail and title gonna be?’ And then they scramble last minute.”
Snowball reverses this process entirely. “If you cannot think about how this awesome idea that you have in your head in less than one second is very interesting to someone to click, it’s not a good video,” Ryan states. “We don’t even make videos that we think are awesome. However, if we can’t come up with a packaging, thumbnail, and title that make it a must-watch, it’s just not worth our time.”
The Mission and Future of Snowball
As Snowball completed its first year in operation, Ryan’s priorities for the company’s growth are clear. “The most important thing is case studies for us,” he states. “The team is entirely focused on how to build a portfolio of epic case studies. Anytime we talk about a case study, we get floods of interest.”
As the founder shares, Snowball is growing faster than all of his previous ventures combined. However, the company is deliberately limiting its growth to ensure quality and build repeatable frameworks. “We are setting these limits of two clients a month right now to focus more on building these case studies and giving each partner the attention and time it needs,” Ryan explains.
The company’s larger mission transcends its own growth. “It sounds ambitious, but we want to transform how the biggest brands in the world think about marketing,” Ryan says. “I want the world to start thinking about brands as studios, as storytellers, and their bar for success is how good they can tell stories and how much they can build a relationship and an audience that they own as a brand.”
This vision suggests a meeting point between brand marketing and creator principles, where major companies function as content studios, building direct relationships with audiences through storytelling rather than interruptive advertising.
“Five years from now, I want the biggest brands in the world to feel as though the most important marketing effort they should be focused on is telling organic stories that captivate millions of an audience and build a deep community for them,” Ryan declares.
His message about YouTube’s importance is clear: “Having been on all the social platforms for the past 15 years, YouTube is the only platform that, year over year, has consistently gotten stronger. It’s the number one streamed and watched platform on every single device, including TV.”
Ryan believes brands must recognize this shift in consumer behavior and creator aspirations. His final message to brands is both a warning and an invitation: “You have to know that’s where the mind of your future is. The brands need to wake up.”
Checkout Our Latest Podcast