The YouTube Top 10 Brands - Part I

Every time we at Custom Communication do social media strategic reviews for clients we can't help but note the growing influence of YouTube on a company's reputation.

So, ahead of our Social Media Influence conference we decided to compile our own YouTube Corporate Top 10 list. We've chosen 10 of the biggest global brands with the help of Business Week's annual top 100 brand guide. All of the following videos appear within the first 10 results in a search of the company name, each one has been viewed over 1 million times and each has generated hundreds of comments.

Here then, in reverse order, is part one of Custom Communication's YouTube Corporate Top 10.

While you're watching, ask yourself this question - Do you know how your company looks on YouTube?

10, TOYOTA (65,700 videos in total)

"Top Gear: Killing a Toyota Part 1"  - Viewed 1,132,279 times (1562 comments)

Car brands do particularly well on YouTube especially if a, they go really fast b, they are involved in spectacular crashes c, they are incredibly expensive d, all of the above. That said this Toyota clip is a roaring success for none of these reasons: instead it benefits from being the star of one of Top Gear's most famous stunts in which our heroes try unsuccessfully to destroy a Toyota pick up truck (including the now infamous moment where Jeremy Clarkson rams the truck into a tree).

Impact on Reputation - +9  (Toyota's tough guy reputation reinforced and Top Gear cred to boot)

9, IKEA (7,120 videos in total)

"Banned Commercial - Swedish Midsummer"  - Viewed 1,483,858 times. 2,727 comments

The home furnishing powerhouse has a reputation for quirky informality but it probably didn't bank on it's German colleagues taking the piss out of a traditional Swedish Midsummer festival in a TV ad. It was quickly pulled from TV but lives on online in a strangely long format for an ad.

 

Impact on Reputation: 0 (Have you ever eaten at an Ikea restaurant?)

8, MICROSOFT (101,000 videos in total)

"Microsoft Surface Parody" - Viewed 2,068,861 times. 3,322 comments

Popular Mechanics calls Microsoft's Surface "the coffee table that will change the world" - a futuristic vision of home computing that does away with keyboard and mouse. It has the techies buzzing with both praise and a bit of ridicule. This video morphs both sentiments into a funny product preview of the Surface. As the narrator intones: "In the future getting tanked with your friends is going to be a whole lot more fun because you'll be sitting at a table that makes something cool happen every time they bring a drink....which you'll want to do over and over".

Impact on Reputation: +5 (Imitation = flattery even when takes pot shots at Redmond's design prowess. Could have been far worse - check out the next most viewed offering, "Microsoft designs the iPod".)

7, BUDWEISER (7,460 videos in total)

"Banned Super Bowl 2007 Bud commercial" - Viewed 2,149,516 times, 618 comments

What happens when you've spent millions on a slightly racy Superbowl ad and then the censor killjoys decide to ban it? The ad finds its way onto YouTube of course and gains cult status along with a whole new audience.

Impact on Reputation: +7 (This is manna from heaven for YouTube fans.)

6, DISNEY (439,000 videos in total)

"Internet is for Porn" - Viewed 3,278,230 times, 3,159 comments

Admittedly the number one viewed Disney-themed video actually is a clip of "A Whole New World" from "Aladdin" but not far behind is this not-so-family friendly mashup of Disney clips and a wonderfully rude Avenue Q song.

Impact on Reputation: - 8 (Perhaps not as embarrassing as having the 15-year old star of your top-selling pre-teen franchise pose semi-clad for Vanity Fair but surely not what Uncle Walt had in mind when he said: "Movies can and do have tremendous influence in shaping young lives in the realm of entertainment towards the ideals and objectives of normal adulthood.")

Part II to follow.

Comments

[Les Csonge]

Fanatstic stuff, but this kind of thing is not just limited to VIDEO ! - Digital Documents (Editions)are also creating similar viral waves such as this one relating to the Bejing Olympics -

Don't look if you just had lunch ;-)

http://publishing.yudu.com/Freedom/Ac41p/BeijingFastFood