When the duo dubbed by Rolling Stone as ‘the elder statesmen of the creator economy’ approach you to expand their offering beyond YouTube, you graciously step up to the plate. Their request: help launch an educational product that empowers creators to build sustainable, revenue-generating sponsorship businesses.
What began as the strategic development of a 30-day cohort-based course – complete with landing page design, pricing strategy, customer acquisition approach, and student experience support – quickly evolved into something more nuanced.
Recognizing the need to align Colin & Samir’s educational offering with their existing ventures, we saw a unique branding opportunity. With their brand already anchored by a simple (yet somehow iconic?) yellow circle, we leveraged this element in the design of Creator Startup while developing a distinct visual language to differentiate it from their other media-focused properties.
This transformation led to a holistic creative update across the entire brand family, including their core brand and the Creator Support podcast. We refined the visual language with new logos, wordmarks, and podcast art, creating a cohesive design system that their team can consistently apply across all mediums.
We also elevated their existing single-page web presence to match the high-quality standards of their YouTube channel. The dynamic multi-page site now serves as the central resource hub for Colin & Samir’s universe, providing their audience direct access to their content and products. These strategic adjustments not only strengthened their brand identity, but also positioned them to expand their organic search visibility.
The launch of Creator Startup was the first time Colin & Samir offered a paid product to their community under their own brand. To avoid criticism from a community accustomed to free content, we needed to be extremely thoughtful in our positioning. We threw out the conventional online course playbook, including the idea of any “hard sells”, opting for a more authentic communication strategy that reflected Colin & Samir’s commitment to delivering value at each touchpoint.
The initial cohort launch filled up immediately, generating $100k in revenue. More importantly, we gave Colin & Samir a central brand hub outside of social platforms to support their mission of empowering the next generation of creators.
Since then, we’ve worked closely with Colin & Samir to understand the unique needs of their audience segments, contributing to the development of a multi-tier offering that addresses the diverse challenges of their creator community. We’re also collaborating on a comprehensive educational program, featuring multiple asynchronous, self-paced courses, each tackling a specific creator challenge, from ideation to growth.
Colin & Samir
Creator Startup
About Colin & Samir
Colin Rosenblum and Samir Chaudry have established themselves, their YouTube channel, and their 3x weekly newsletter, The Publish Press, as perhaps the most trusted collection of resources on the internet today to learn about the business of being a creator. From interviews with the world’s biggest creators to thoughtful commentary on the latest happenings in the creator economy, Colin & Samir have built a brand synonymous with their mission: to educate and empower the next generation of creator.
1.4m
YouTube subscribers
100k
newsletter readers
10+
years as creators
Ask
Launch an educational offering designed to help creators generate ideas, build sustainable channels, and grow profitable brand partnerships.
Approach
What began as the strategic development of a 30-day cohort-based course quickly evolved into something more nuanced. We implemented a holistic creative update across Colin & Samir’s entire brand family, strengthening their brand identity to scale across multiple properties. We then transformed their website into a central resource hub, expanding organic search visibility and providing their audience direct access to content and products.
Impact
The initial cohort launch filled up immediately, generating $100k in revenue. More importantly, we gave Colin & Samir a central brand hub outside of social platforms to support their mission of empowering the next generation of creators.
"The most important thing we look for as creators are trusted partners so that we can stay in our creative process. Rare Days is one of those partners to us."
"The most important thing we look for as creators are trusted partners so that we can stay in our creative process. Rare Days is one of those partners to us."
