Influencers make viral video magic
After losing their day jobs, duo makes it work on social media
In a basement studio in west end Halifax, longtime friends Tony Kaill and Peter Earley are unlocking the alchemic key to making viral video magic. Friends since their public school days, they put their heads together under the umbrella of Beyond the Algo, in a mutual quest for followers and supporters on Instagram and Tiktok. The duo refines its skills and approaches to see what clicks with viewers to earn more clicks in the process.
You can find them under their handles of @tonykaill and @early_pete (earlypete on Tiktok), with established niches designed to appeal to the itchy trigger fingers of phone scrollers looking for a 30-second distraction.
Kaill is also a musician, who puts the right side of his brain into action to create what he calls video ASMR: Addictive visuals incorporating art, science and sleight of hand, like stuffing balloons inside each other and filling them with coloured liquid before freezing them, or experimenting with power tools, paper and markers.
Drawing on his background in the food service industry, Earley serves up hot takes on popular foodstuffs while offering up opinions on internet stunt food creations like deep fried mozza donuts crusted with blue Takis corn chip snacks or oven baked pasta sprinkled with sour Nerds candy.
“I refuse to believe this is a serious recipe,” he exclaims over one stunt food clip. “Who hurt you, and why are you trolling us all so badly with your weird spaghetti?”
Earley has also studied marketing, which he applies to posting videos that build on the pair’s appeal as their clips rack up tens of thousands of views.
“You stumble on something that does work, you get a really good response from people and you just sort of lean into it,” says Earley. “This whole TikTok thing was originally a concept for one longer video, we didn’t envision it panning out the way it did, but you don’t want to look a gift horse in the mouth.
“When people like what they like, who are we to tell them? So that was kind of it.”
After the COVID-19 pandemic hit a year ago, taking away their day jobs in
the process, Kaill and Earley went into overdrive to see what they could create in quarantine that might earn them some attention and potentially some income.
Earley thrives on Tiktok, where a post like his personal ranking of all the bread types at Subway earned close to 100,000 views. On Instagram, Kaill gets similar numbers his frozen turducken balloon stunt, which is pretty hypnotic as each colourful layer melts away and the final icy globe gets an injection of vibrant dye. On Tiktok, the video is an even bigger hit with 1.7 million views, while a time lapse clip using Spirograph gets double that.
“How can I make something that is completely unnecessary and harder than it needs to be?” says Kaill of his approach to making the video equivalent of a lava lamp. “Like taking a spoon and jamming it in a drill and trying to create a tornado out of that with some colour in it.
“I don’t even know that I know where the creative motivation comes from for it, I guess it’s just kind of trying things and thinking it’s fun on my end. That did seem to resonate with people, so that’s great.”
Together as Beyond the Algo, Earley and Kaill are still tinkering with finding the formula for more views, more followers, and more shares of their work. With their resources of video equipment and the green screen-equipped studio, they’re considering making more content for Youtube, where it’s possible to get ad revenue and explore ideas that take longer than 30 seconds to get across.
Earley also has ideas for books on elaborate culinary concoctions and recipes for more acceptable forms of comfort food, but right now the focus remains on keeping things short and snappy on social media and continuing to build their individual brands.
“It does seem like if you work really, really hard, and try a lot of things, there is money to be made out there,” says Kaill. “Really, there’s more of a future in the coming economy for content creation, whether its arts or education or news, all that kind of stuff in the new media.
“Even if it’s not through Youtube, which a lot of people are used to now, but even through things like Tiktok and Instagram, I think there’s going to be a lot of income created through that for a lot of people.”
Creating the ideal viral video is like finding the perfect pizza pocket, with the right amount of gooey addictive ingredients stuffed the confines of a portable pastry shell. It’s a recipe that keeps evolving, but the Beyond the Algo team makes new examples every day designed to raise its profile across multiple platforms and increase the chances of finding partners who can provide support while benefitting from their efforts.
“It’s changing,” says Earley. “Even in the world of traditional marketing, which I’m somewhat familiar with, you see big brands now — a lot of times working through agencies — setting up someone for new media, for shortform video, for these things.
“Smart brands know that working with smaller influencers is sometimes better than paying someone like Mario Lopez (from Saved By the Bell) for a shout out. It’s great having A.C. Slater on your brand, but are there hundreds of thousands of people looking to him for advice or product recommendations?”