YouTube can catapult brand awareness and drive sales. It’s a fantastic channel to showcase your brand’s creative spirit and play longer-form video to your fans. Here we’ve selected some of our favourite branded videos on YouTube to give you some inspiration on how you can emulate what’s working on this channel:
Blendtec: The ‘Will it blend?’ series was one of the pioneers of branded content on YouTube. Its episodic content gained international acclaim, as marketers across the globe queued up to applaud its simple, funny but hugely effective video series. Since 2006, Blendtec’s founder Tom Dickson has starred in more than 140 videos demonstrate the power of his blenders. He has amassed an impressive 256 million views on this channel. Such is the notoriety of this brand, Blendtec now has bloggers, Instagrammers and YouTube stars begging to partner with them. This is the stuff of viral marketing legends.
Lyft: The ridesharing app has put some serious thought and creative muscle behind its video content on YouTube. From animation to spoof, this brand has covered many genres of film. Last year it released four 30-second ads depicting a fictional competitor meeting in a boardroom workshopping ideas of how to compete with Lyft. The spoof videos did a fab job of getting in key messages such as where Lyft drivers can be found (Chicago, Seattle, Miami to name a few), and how much they’re making in tips, and how drivers are being rated. The ads have so far clocked up 3.3 million views. Appealing to a more emotional audience, the brand created a seven-minute animated film at Christmas, called June, that showed how a retired woman found a new purpose in her life when she became a Lyft driver. It has had more than 7 million views.
Samsung has gone into partnership with YouTuber, filmmaker, vlogger and founder of a social media company Beme, Casey Neistat. Together, along with the award-winning agency Wieden + Kennedy, they’ve created some of the most watched branded videos on the channel, including the film ‘The Rest of Us’, which was shown at prime time during this year’s Oscars. The video struck a chord with the audience as Neistat spoke up on behalf of the millions of (Samsung) smartphone owners who are creating art and film from the handset in their pockets. His latest video collaboration with Samsung, released this month, is another shout out to all the talented, and underrated YouTubers/digital creators who’ve been able to hone their craft thanks to Samsung’s tech.
Under Armour – the American apparel brand is creating compelling videos. Two years ago, it began its ‘Rule Yourself’ campaign, featuring well-known sports athletes talking about how their achievements have been a result of their sheer grit and determination. The video of Misty Copeland, the female ballerina rejected by a renowned ballet company as her body shape/size didn’t fit, went viral, and has been viewed more than 2 million times. Pre-Olympics Under Amour filmed the US girls gymnastics team practising, with a slogan that said: “It’s what you do in the dark that puts you in the light.” This powerful advert is a great example of how a brand marries its objective with its audience’s passion.
Squatty Potty – is the one-hit wonder film from 2015. It’s completely bonkers and out there, but somehow works, by shocking you into remembering its product – the Squatty Potty. It’s a video, featuring a wide-eyed unicorn squatting over a series of wafer cones filling them with rainbow colour ‘ice-cream’, that has had an impressive 30 million views, and an example of a piece of branded content that went viral in its truest sense. Squatty Potty has been able to attribute amazing business results – a 600% increase in sales, 400% increase in retail – after the release of the film.
