🔎RR#13 - The luckiest shrimp in the world

[booming voice] THE SHRIMPLE.

Hello Retentioneers! 🔎

We kick off with this week’s inspiring quote…

You feeling me with this one?

With that in mind, let’s get into 3 more videos…

Video #1

Title: Building a Mayan Temple For Your Shrimp!
Creator: Aquarium Shed
Average % viewed: 35.6%

What to repeat:

stakes

• The cutaway at 1:20 adds retention-grabbing stakes to the video - not just for the creator, but for us as potential shrimp owners.

• By hearing him say how unlikely the plan is to work even for him, we feel like we need to watch him make it if we want to have any hope of succeeding ourselves.

• So we can’t click away without first seeing how he does it.

• Ergo, S2 is pretty strong.

hook

• I like the style of the hook overall - showing the skeleton of the build and timing the cuts to music keeps it super interesting

• It could have been even better if we’d seen one or two brief shots of the final result, though. Not to give the game away completely, but just to hint at the incredible stuff the viewer will see if they stick around.

• Currently, we don’t really see the Shrimple take shape until around 5min.

What to improve:

call to action

• This creator told me that his audience tends to be slightly older and more used to “traditional media”…

• …which made the promotion of his new NFT seem a little out of place 😂

• It wasn’t hard to see why there was a dropoff in S3.

payoff

• The last 90s of this video don’t need to be there. This is something we’ve talked about in Retention Review a few times so I won’t labour the point.

• The video should end at 7:48 because we’ve experienced the payoff.

• The voiceover segment at the end showcases the Shrimple nicely, so 90 additional seconds of similar shots don’t add anything new for the viewer.

Takeaway:

Make sure every part of your content aligns with your audience’s psychographics. This extends to promoting your own products and doing sponsorships. If there’s misalignment here, it’ll show in your retention.

Video #2

Title: Luffy vs all of One Piece in Minecraft
Creator: SuperDevilMadness
Average % viewed: 43.7%

What to repeat:

foreshadowing

• The first 60s is spent setting up the various bosses the protagonist is going to face. He almost loses against some basic foes in the first 30s, so we’re interested to see how he could possibly beat something harder.

• 4:58 - He beats the first boss, and then we’re told: “the next boss is 2x stronger”.

  • This reminds us about the high stakes at play, and promises further payoffs.

  • It pays to remind the audience of the stakes (especially in a longer video) because it’s easy for a viewer to forget about them when there’s a lot going on.

stakes

• The video constantly surprises the viewer. Just when we think the protagonist has completed a certain objective, another unexpected challenge is thrown at him to ramp up the stakes even further.

• If your video has a “protagonist” who has to overcome challenges, consider how you could subvert audience expectations by elevating the stakes even further once we think we know what’s coming.

What to improve:

• I don’t wanna just fill word count here by looking for problems. This video is awesome. Would love to hear your thoughts if you have any constructive feedback though!

Takeaway:

If your video has a “protagonist”, try subverting audience expectations by elevating the stakes even further after they seem to have overcome a hurdle.

---

🔎 See all of my reviews in 1 place.

Tired of guessing why people clicked away? Want to understand more about audience habits, pacing and storytelling?

The Retention Hub collects dozens of retention graphs and lets you filter by niche, views, retention problem, average view duration (%) and more.

This is the fastest way to supercharge your understanding of video retention to keep people watching you for longer.

---

Back to it…

Video #3

Title: I Watched a Kid's Show, and it Broke Me (Bluey)
Creator: RoyalPear
Average % viewed: 54.6%

What to repeat:

pacing

• Check out that hook. 7s explaining the premise and we’re off.

• We spend no more than a minute (at most) on any one topic. Obviously, 1 minute isn’t a rule, but it feels just right for this video.

foreshadowing

• Our perception of kids’ TV is that it’s usually pretty shallow.

• So when the creator keeps hitting that an episode of this show made him genuinely emotional, we wanna stick around to find out why.

What to improve:

setup/expectation

• Retention almost levels out during S1 but starts dropping more rapidly again at around 15s.

  • I felt slightly taken aback from 15s-30s because the creator was genuinely complimenting the show.

  • This contradicted the expectation I had from the title, and from the text that literally just appeared on-screen saying “this was not fun”.

  • I’m all for giving the show a fair review, but I would have highlighted a moment from the show that illustrated why the show was “not fun” at this moment.

• The same thing happened in the second half of S2 when the creator spent 1min complimenting the music.

  • But retention levelled out as soon as we got onto “the cringe” moments from the show.

  • Overall, I think people clicked this video because they wanted a laugh, so the segment reviewing the genuinely funny lines from the show + the cringe moments were exactly what this video needed a little more of.

  • Whereas more bland observations about the concept being nice because it’s about a family and the soundtrack being genuinely good… maybe wasn’t what people clicked for.

  • The creator himself is funny throughout, but some segments of the video didn’t fully align with the expectation I had from the title.

Takeaway:

Re-read your script / review your edit while thinking consciously about the expectations your title sets.

---

Shoutouts

• Sign up for Ali Abdaal’s final PTYA live cohort → Click here

• See all my Retention Reviews in a single database → Click here

---

That’s all for this week!

I’m going away for my birthday so I won’t be doing any reviews next week.

Be well, Retentioneers!

George 👋