I hear the same three objections from business owners almost every week. Our product is not right for YouTube. We are B2B, so we have a different audience. We are not sexy enough to make videos people would watch. Each one sounds reasonable, and each one is an excuse rather than a reason. I was reminded of that when I visited Shadow Foam, the company founded by Jonathan Shone, and saw what they have built.
An Industrial Product With 135,000 Subscribers
Shadow Foam makes foam inserts for tool storage. It is about as far from a glamorous, consumer-facing product as you can get. And yet the channel they have built around it has more than 135,000 subscribers. I was genuinely impressed at how a very industrial product had become the foundation of something that good. The lesson is not that foam is secretly exciting. The lesson is that the product is rarely the thing that decides whether content works.
What they understood is that people do not subscribe to a product. They subscribe to knowledge, to a process, to watching something be done well. Shadow Foam turned the ordinary reality of their business into content worth following, and the audience rewarded it. If an industrial foam company can do that, the idea that your business is too boring for video does not hold up.
Be the Front Man of Your Brand
The single most important move is to put yourself in front of the brand. Audiences form around people, not logos, which is the same argument I made when I told an ecommerce CEO that her personal brand was one of her most powerful tools. When a founder or a named person becomes the front of the content, the company borrows that human trust, and people have something real to follow.
This is exactly why we started documenting our own agency openly on LinkedIn rather than hiding the work behind a polished brand voice. It felt uncomfortable at first, and it took me far too long to start, which is the honest story behind twenty years on LinkedIn, mostly wasted. The pattern is always the same. The visible, human version of a business outperforms the faceless one.
Share Knowledge and Show the Transformation
What makes the Shadow Foam content work is that it shares real knowledge and shows a transformation. A messy drawer becomes an organised one. A problem becomes a solution, on camera, in a way the viewer can copy. That is the format, and it travels into any industry. Whatever your business actually does each day, there is a before and an after in it that someone would genuinely want to watch.
You do not need a studio or a personality made for television. You need to be willing to stand in front of your own product, explain what you know, and let people see the result. That is also how you start to stand out from other brands in a crowded market, because most of your competitors are still telling themselves they are too boring to bother.
If you want to see how this is done properly, follow Jonathan Shone and watch how he runs it. The approach is repeatable, and the excuses that stop most B2B brands from starting are the only real thing standing in the way.
MageCloud Operating Note
The B2B YouTube Excuse, Tested
THE EXCUSE
We are B2B and not interesting enough
The reason most industrial brands never start a channel.
THE REALITY
135,000 subscribers on foam inserts
A front man, real knowledge, and a visible transformation.
Paul Ryazanov · MageCloud · the product is rarely the problem
If you have been telling yourself your brand is too unglamorous for video, come and find me at the next Ecommerce Camp UK. It is full of operators turning ordinary businesses into content that actually pulls.