July 13, 2017. I saw that Gustaff's old video that I posted on June 22, 2017 was shared by one of those IG accounts that likes to collect and repost popular pics and videos on their account. I thought, oh that's cool. And then other accounts started doing the same thing. Then Gustaff's video popped on a few other Facebook pages. We started getting DM's from companies that wanted to share the video on their account and other platforms. Some even wanted to buy the license! Vince and I were witnessing the phenomenal power of a video going viral. That's right. GUSTAFF'S GONE VIRAL.
His Instagram follower count shot up that weekend and before we knew it, we already had 1000+ followers. It was unbelievable. We made a video back in May to celebrate on hitting 200+ followers. This week, we made a new video to celebrate on hitting 2000+ followers. And it's still climbing! As of this writing, Gustaff currently has 4540 followers. That number is probably going to increase in the next few weeks because we authorized a few places like Daily Mail, Buzz Feed, UNILAD, Today.com, and other media companies to share his video. They'll edit and release the video based on their schedules.
I mentioned earlier that a few companies offered to buy the license to the video. Vince and I thought about it and we weren't really sure what to do. We thought we could try it out to see how it works. I didn't read any good things about it. I ended up talking to the owner of another popular Corgi, Zero Marie Hussein Corgibutt, who also had a video that went viral a few weeks ago. It was a really interesting conversation about how they handled getting those kinds of offers, how they made some mistakes the first time, not being happy with how some of the media companies handled their video, and not seeing the major profit they were promised. They said ultimately, it all depends on what your end goal is. They decided they were just fine giving back to the Corgi community and not trying to monetize all of their videos. However, they did end up selling the rights to one of their videos to help police it online because it was being shared on a lot of platforms with no credit to them.
Since this was Gustaff's first video, we decided that we were fine with the video being shared and being non-exclusive to anyone - which is why it's popping up everywhere - but we agreed not to sell the license for it. If we spot someone sharing it without credit, we'll just tell them to link back to his account. I'm not worried about losing money on the video because I wasn't trying to make money in the first place. At the moment, I don't care if those companies are enjoying the million page views they're getting in their revenue. As long as they credit or link back to his instagram account, we're happy.
Gustaff now has a Gmail account so I can field the incoming offers and I'm working on his Facebook page, which I have yet to promote. I've noticed that a lot of popular Instagram pets do a lot of giveaways or contests to get more followers and connect with other popular pets. I don't want to do that unless I'm feeling generous and have money to spare, which I don't. I've actually considered making merch for Gustaff. I jokingly said that I'll start an Etsy store once he hits 5000 followers. I guess I better get started!
