Brianna Kamienski
Image Credit: Pexels
With over 500 million organic views to his name, content creator Remy Zhang (known online as “Remy Zee”) has achieved online fame through his sharp-witted skits, known for his humorous takes on student life and viral characters, such as the Chinese international student “Lebron.” His videos have earned millions of views across social media and have given him a large following of over 600,000 fans, drawn to his ability to create relatable, funny moments out of normal experiences.
That very instinct for virality later evolved into a career beyond personal content. Remy began working with major brands to produce campaigns that perform more like entertainment than advertising, paving the way for his current role as Creative Director at Cluely. There, he directs digital strategies and large-scale campaigns that merge humor and marketing strategy to help the company capture audience attention in an ever-changing digital market.
Finding A Calling In Comedy
Before his videos were reaching millions, Remy Zhang was studying Integrated Engineering at the University of British Columbia, majoring in computer engineering and completing five internships in tech and product management. All paths seemed pointed toward a conventional career until a creative impulse began to pull him elsewhere. He began experimenting with short-form media on YouTube, but it wasn’t until he started delving into TikTok that he began seriously exploring the limits of his talents.
His breakthrough happened in October 2023 when he posted “Lebron,” a take on a Chinese international student navigating North American campus life. The skit spread across social media within days, earning 40 million direct views and more than 100 million through reposts and recreations. Thousands of viewers made their own versions, turning the character into a viral trend and giving him the momentum to take content creation seriously.
The second TikTok video he ever made reached 20 million views — a moment he describes as the first time he felt truly talented at something. That success pushed him to leave the security of engineering behind, despite heavy family and social pressure to stay on the traditional path.
That leap became his defining career move, setting the stage for his career as a full-time content creator.
Remy’s Storytelling Style
While comedy anchors much of Remy’s work, it comes with a subtle cultural undercurrent that gives his videos depth beyond the punchlines. His sketches often portray the lives of Asian American communities, weaving in the humor found in language mix-ups, strict parenting expectations, and growing up between different (and often disparate) cultures.
A single skit might spotlight the awkwardness of a first-generation student trying to fit in on an American campus or the universal humor in immigrant family dynamics, all delivered through sharp timing and witty writing.
This mix of accessible themes and wit has made his content especially popular with young generations (like Gen Z and even millennials) who could relate to the scenarios he presented or encountered people with similar characteristics to his characters. It’s also what led Stanford, UC Berkeley, Washington University, the University of Pennsylvania, and other institutions to invite him to speak, where students recognized relatable experiences in his comedy, presented in an entertaining format.
Building Viral Campaigns for Global Brands
What began as personal content soon developed into lasting partnerships with larger brands. As he kept posting, Remy began getting invitations from companies like A&W, VitaCoco, Intel, Duolingo, and even the LA Lakers to produce campaigns that consistently broke through the noise of short-form advertising.
The numbers speak for themselves: both his A&W and VitaCoco sponsored videos hit 18 million across different platforms, with almost 40,000 likes on Instagram alone, and Duolingo’s topped six million, and even one-off collaborations like his Intel campaign drew millions of impressions.
Remy describes his strategy while working with brands as “repeatable virality.” Rather than chasing lucky breaks, he studies audience behavior, testing how humor, pacing, and cultural relevance work together to create repeatable success. The result is branded content that acts more like entertainment than marketing — a crucial asset at a time when younger audiences scroll past anything resembling an ad.
Leading Creative Strategy at Cluely
Today, Remy serves as Creative Director at Cluely, a breakout AI startup backed by Andreessen Horowitz that offers real-time, on-screen assistants to help people navigate high-pressure moments (like remote job interviews and live presentations). In this role, he has shifted from creating viral skits to shaping the company’s entire brand narrative through creative ad campaigns. Under his direction, Cluely’s Series A funding announcement reached 5.6 million views, while his scripted “Cluely Office” series became a breakout hit — with the launch episode earning over seven million views and the third episode surpassing 10 million.
The transition from solo creator to creative lead reflects how Remy incorporates a more technical precision to his trademark comedic timing. His engineering background lends a problem-solving mindset to marketing challenges, while years of content experimentation help him predict what audiences will share and discuss.
A New Era of Short-Form Marketing
For Remy, the future holds both creative and professional ambitions. On a personal level, he plans to stay close to the content creation that he’s most passionate about, by continuing to share Asian American and Canadian stories through comedy, while using his channel as a space to test new ideas and experiment with different formats of short-form content.
At Cluely, his focus remains on scaling the company’s social media reach to 100,000 followers in less than 6 months and shaping campaigns that blur the boundaries between marketing and entertainment. “The older way of thinking in terms of social marketing made it difficult to work with brands in the past,” he has noted.
As such, he hopes to usher in a new strategy, which he calls “content-integrated marketing,” using entertainment and connection as the conversion engine — shifting away from interruptive ads to content people choose to engage with.
For Remy Zhang, the mission has evolved from making people laugh to helping brands thrive in the short-form era, using authenticity and cultural insight to connect meaningfully with a new generation of viewers.