The most Internetest of all!!

I don’t think I really understood the power of YouTube and video marketing until way after the rest of the population. It wasn’t until about 8 or 9 years ago that I, in fact, used YouTube for the first time. Of course, I had heard all the buzz about the site, but I didn’t really understand how or why people would use YouTube as a marketing tool.

Then one bright and sunny morning, I wanted a fried egg. Now I know you probably aren’t making the connection there, so let me explain. I’m not ashamed to admit that up until a few years ago, I knew nothing about cooking. If it couldn’t be microwaved or heated up in the oven, I wasn’t making it. One morning I had a craving for a fried egg, yet no idea how to even begin making one. Low and behold, I realized I could google it. And what showed up in my search results, about 1000 videos on how to make a fried egg. I watched one and voila…..my craving was fulfilled, but I digress.

What really struck me though is how late I was to the party. Thousands and thousands of people had uploaded videos on how to cook an egg! If “that” simple task was getting so many hits, imagine the possibilities of something that people really wanted to learn or find out about.

I guess you could say YouTube is pretty much the social media channel of choice for videos. All the major brands have their own YouTube channel and pretty much any viral video you see if available on YouTube. This one platform has time and again created videos that continually receive millions of views and almost dictate the social conversations in which we choose to participate.

Sometimes it’s hard to fathom what the next viral sensation will be…..do you need to use humor, or ingenuity, or the unusual and unique. Think about some of the most viral videos you remember in recent years…………what comes to mind? How about the Keyboard Cat? Charlie bit my finger? The Harlem Shake? Each one of those became a viral video for a different reason and some I’m not sure why, in all honesty.

As brands attempt to come up with the next viral video, they have sometimes gone to great lengths to entertain and break away from tradition. Case in point…..the airline industry. Many have revamped their safety videos to include song and dance or another entertaining hook. (i.e. Virgin Airlines). However, I think one airline has recently taken the cake on the best safety video – Delta Airlines.

Instead of trying to re-invent the wheel, Delta leveraged the already popular Internet sensations and memes and incorporated them into their most recent video, 23 of them to be exact, including all of the ones mentioned above. What I love about this idea is that it hits so many consumers. With the combined total views of all those videos, there is probably at least one that every passenger has seen or heard of. In addition, the video is entertaining as you wait to see what other strange, quirky event will happen. The video was uploaded just over a month ago and already has more than 8.5 million views! They created the most internetest safety video of all safety videos………

Check it out for yourself below? Did Delta miss any memes? Do you think Delta took the easy road by just copying a bunch of other videos?