Toyota are busily promoting their new C-HR with a few different video campaigns. One involves a pairing with a really popular YouTube channel: Bad Lip Reading.

 

What did they do right?

Bad Lip Reading has over 6 million subscribers for their funny, irreverent and often surreal videos.  Created by one person, whose identity is a mystery, the channel has taken on sports, music videos, TV, films and politics. As a fan myself, this combination means that I voluntarily sat through 16 Toyota ads back to back. I’m not going to be the only one.

Influencer marketing is big these days.  For decades, ads have used celebrities to garner interest and link their brands with aspiration lifestyles.  in 2017, though, it’s not celebrities that people connect with.  It’s YouTubers.  In a study by Defy Media in 2015, 63% of millennials said that they would try a brand or a product recommended by a YouTube content creator, compared to 48%  who said the same about a movie or TV star. This study followed up on a couple of years of data from Variety magazine that said essentially the same thing.  YouTubers are more relatable, more authentic, and more accessible, and as a result, more likely to change viewers perceptions of a brand.  Despite the creator of Bad Lip Reading being unknown, his work is well loved and Toyota were smart to partner with him for these

What did they do wrong?

I’m actually a little on the fence about whether this is a negative or not, but Toyota oddly chose to make only three of the 16 BLR ads ‘Public’ on YouTube.  The remaining 13 are ‘Unlisted’ (check out my video blog on the difference between these options if you’re not sure) so people can only view them by watching the public playlist of C-HR videos on Toyota’s YouTube channel, or by following the links at the end of the videos.

This second option is why maybe this shortcoming is actually brilliant.  Toyota have made excellent use of YouTube’s native ‘Endscreen’ feature to link to three more BLR videos every time you finish one.  That’s how I ended up watching all 16 in a row, and I suspect others will carry straight on with the next one too.

If you have a series of videos on the same topic, I would suggest making them all public.  But more importantly, make sure you use every tool available to you to link the videos together online so that interested viewers can keep watching your content.

 


More Marketing Video Blogs

For more tips on making your marketing video amazing, check out our previous blogs below:

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