Last month, Sabrina Bahsoon, aka Tube Girl, shot a handful of TikToks for Boss at Milan fashion week. And one blew the rest out of the water. It was a behind-the-scenes video that captured Bahsoon filming herself dancing in her now famous #tubegirl style. It garnered 145M views, more than twice that of the front-of-camera version she appeared in with Dixie D’Amelio.

Boss struck gold with their partnership with Bahsoon for many reasons including being in the right place at the right time with the right person. But there’s a lesson for the rest of us as well: BTS resonates. Take a look at two TikToks BMW partnered with German content creator Falco Punch on a while back. The front-of-camera version had 80K views. The behind-the-scenes had 1.9M. 

Why does behind-the-scenes content perform so well? For one, it lets audiences feel privy to the creative process. Watching BTS content makes us feel like we’re seeing something special — a peek behind the brand curtain. In comparison, front-of-camera videos look and feel highly produced. They’re the brand version of what sociologist Erving Goffman once dubbed front-stage behaviors — deliberate behavior for an audience. He distinguished it with “backstage” behavior, when we let down our guard and act as we truly are.

That’s why when a brand brings us behind the scenes, it feels like we’ve gone “backstage” in more ways than one. And that resonates. Just ask Tube Girl.

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