Known for his addictive daily one-minute videos, Nuseir Yassin exploded into the sphere of popular media with his greater-known handle: Nas Daily. He started Nas Daily initially on Facebook where his vlogs could be received by his circle; it was only a matter of time before fame catapulted the project to the more public forum of YouTube. Having amassed a following of 13.9 million followers, Yassin has just started his own marketing agency – 1000 Media – which is set to get an office in Bengaluru soon.
When a personality makes a name in a niche, it can get hard to associate them with anything else; the immensity of Nas Daily can similarly make one wonder how smooth the transition is going to be from vlogger to CEO of a marketing agency. What is key to understanding this transition is the fact that the success of Nas Daily lies in positioning and narration: something integral to marketing as well. In Yassin’s own words, “I think if I wasn’t a video maker there would be no agency. The main reason we’re building this is because we know how to do this. We know how to tell the story of a brand, a product, a country, an agency, a non-profit, or a cause; we know how to tell the story of something in video format.”
The knowledge of ‘how to do this’ is reflected in Nas Academy (a video-making school) and Nas Studios (a production studio), which seem like more obvious consequences of Nas Daily. The success also means that there was a rising demand, and along with it, a demand for wider application; and it is this very demand that 1000 Media was born out of. The rising problem reached Yassin for a solution, which seemed to lie in replicating the same model that made him popular. As he states, “We found out that marketing is a real problem. The more viral Nas Daily got, the more people came to us saying ‘help us do this’. So we saw that building Nas Daily for others was the opportunity that we wanted to double down on.”
Despite the fact the 1000 Media model is directly based on the one that made Nas Daily a worldwide sensation, there are obvious differences in terms of approach; while the latter was born out of a personal desire to share, the former is innately a service-based operation. Yassin, who considers this the end of a chapter and the beginning of another, confesses, “Nas Daily is a private channel that helps me express my opinions. It’s not for brands; I do whatever I want there. For seven years I’ve worked as a creator; my next goal through 1000 Media is to start a new chapter as an entrepreneur.”
It is expressly made clear in the 1000 Media outreach that Yassin, as the CEO, would be directly and materially involved in the workings of the agency, effectively making it a personal project. The core ethos of the agency, according to Yassin, is connection. In his own words, “The core philosophy of the entire company is to bring people together. The way we bring people together is building bridges, creating content that makes people understand each other more. The whole point of content is bringing people together. If you were to summarise everything we do, it would be this.” About his expansion to India, with bases of his company being erected in Bengaluru, Delhi, and other metros, Yassin adds, “We’re launching in India. We already have significant clients there and we’re doubling down.”