Conestoga College: Where I Started Thinking Beyond the Brief
Contributed to growing the channel from 100 to 2,500+ subscribers by thinking beyond the brief.
I was studying strategic marketing communications and working as a video assistant. My job was to shoot and edit.
But I kept seeing opportunities to grow the channel that nobody was acting on. So I just started doing it.
I set up a Linktree that connected Instagram directly to YouTube, with links to specific high-interest videos that I updated around sports events and special events.
I cross-posted content across three accounts — our department Instagram, Conestoga's main Instagram, and the Waterloo community events page — to funnel attention back to YouTube.
I wrote captions and designed thumbnails to improve click-through. For capstone project videos, I helped students frame what to say about their work — highlighting what made the program and Conestoga unique while promoting the college.
Educational content, event highlights, short-form montage edits, and horizontal montage videos.
Shot on DSLR and occasionally iPhone for event highlights. Edited in Premiere Pro, graded in DaVinci Resolve.
The YouTube channel grew from 100 to 2,500+ subscribers during my time there. I contributed through cross-posting, the Linktree funnel, and countless hours of shooting and editing — but I wasn't the only one driving it.
My bigger takeaway was learning that production skills alone don't grow anything — distribution thinking does.
Some of my edits shifted the tone toward a creator style that didn't fully align with the college's brand identity. The channel was still in an exploratory phase, so it was understandable — but if I did it again, I'd be more intentional about keeping a consistent brand voice even while experimenting.