Viral YouTube stunts—how brands are partnering with the creators behind them

Muddy Bites, a direct-to-consumer snack brand that sells miniature waffle cones, set out last week to build the world’s largest ice cream cone with the help of YouTuber Matthew Beem, known for outlandish stunts such as turning his bedroom into a fish tank and creating gigantic versions of everyday items. The 11-foot-tall sugary construction—which Beem assembled in a Walmart parking lot as part of Muddy Bites’ campaign to promote its launch in Walmart stores—required 400 pounds of waffle cone and more than 1,000 pounds of vanilla ice cream. But for Beem, a creator who has built his career on these types of over-the-top feats, those massive quantities of food were business as usual. Brands are increasingly teaming up with creators such as Beem and MrBeast, who have carved out a niche on YouTube with attention-grabbing and often bizarre stunts. The goal is to get in front of millions of consumers—often Gen Zers—viewing this type of content on YouTube. Also read: Building brand trust with Gen Z See all of Ad Age's 2023 Leading Women here “When I first heard about this opportunity with Muddy Bites, I was driving a giant Fortnite bus across the country,” Beem said, referring to a recent video in which he recreated the bus that plays a central role in the video game. That video has garnered nearly 6 million views in the five months since Beem uploaded it. “I was instantly so excited about it. We stopped at a gas station and immediately started coming up with ideas for it.” Beem frequently works with MrBeast, also known as Jimmy Donaldson, who has quickly climbed the YouTube ranks to become one of the highest-grossing YouTubers in history, having earned $54 million in 2021, according to Forbes. Donaldson has built much of his online fame on similarly flashy stunts, which he revealed in a podcast appearance cost him an average of $3 to $4 million per month to produce. Beem has followed Donaldson’s model for YouTube success, amassing nearly 4 million YouTube subscribers since pivoting his content to center around stunts roughly two years ago. In that time, he’s also teamed up with prominent YouTubers such as Kai Cenat and Logan Paul and begun partnering with a handful of brands, including energy drink brand GFuel. With Beem’s videos typically drawing in anywhere from 1 million to nearly 15 million views, brand partners are able to appear in front of his large audiences. Brands can sponsor Beem to embark on a stunt tied to the brand, as Muddy Bites did, or simply integrate an ad read into the building process documented in the video. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Muddy Bites (@muddybites) “[These stunt-oriented partnerships] are definitely a trend we’ve been seeing, and I don’t know that every brand or product can pull them off,” said Jessie Ferraioli, head of marketing for Muddy Bites. “But we knew that we wanted to do something big and unconventional for our launch—not only because it’s Walmart, but also because this is our first national, brick-and-mortar retailer. We thought if we could get out there in a big way, people would get really excited and engage with us and the momentum would take it from there.” These partnerships have an element of longevity to them for brands, too, as YouTube videos have one of the longest lifespans out of all social media content and can continue driving clicks for months or even years after they're first uploaded, according to research out of Australian National University. So, when a brand sponsors one of these creators’ videos, their eye-catching, engrossing stunts can pull in thousands or even millions of viewers—which continues centering the brand in users’ viewing experiences for long stretches of time. A new frontier for publicity stunts Just a few months ago, Pizza Hut teamed up with Eric Decker, a YouTuber who often goes by his username, Airrack, for a similar giant-food-themed stunt. In this instance, though, it was Decker who contacted the brand about the partnership. “About a year ago, I DM’d Pizza Hut and asked if they would help me make the world’s largest pizza,” Decker says in the YouTube video that documents his Pizza Hut-sponsored construction of an enormous 132-foot-wide, 68,000-slice pizza. “And for some reason they agreed to help a stupid YouTuber make the world’s largest pizza.” Pizza Hut used the opportunity to promote the return of its “Big New Yorker” pizza—and the video, which had its branding woven throughout, has since received 13 million views. Pizza Hut’s products and logo are featured extensively throughout the video, from the pizzas Decker handed out to fans who gathered to watch him create the massive pizza, to the custom jackets worn by Decker featuring the brand’s red roof logo combined with Decker’s username “Airrack.” “Partnering with a creator for a large- stunt offers distinct advantages over traditional approaches like sponsored videos or social media posts,” said Lindsay Morgan, chief marketing officer at Pizza Hut U.S., in an email. “The stunt creates amplified brand visibility, generates buzz with the unconventional nature of the stunt, and has the potential to go viral, reaching a wider audience. By associating with a respected and influential creator such as Airrack, our brand gained authenticity and credibility.” Morgan also noted that partnering with Decker reflects the brand’s overarching efforts to “usher in a younger generation of fans in a new and exciting way.” @pizzahut so…we did that #nationalpizzaday #worldslargestpizza #pizzahut #airrack ♬ original sound - Pizza Hut Despite the rise of competitors such as Instagram and TikTok, YouTube has remained the most popular social media platform among Gen Z, with 88% of Gen Z survey respondents telling Morning Consult that they regularly use the video-sharing platform. Only 75% reported using Instagram, and 68% said they spend time on TikTok. Brands have been teaming up with YouTubers for years on more traditional influencer marketing formats such as unboxing videos, tutorials featuring a brand’s product and standard ad reads. For influencer marketing agency Pixly, YouTube is where the agency’s clients—many of which are technology-related brands including NordVPN and Wix, or gaming publishers such as Fortnite creator Epic Games—typically see the best results compared to other social media sites, said Race Johnson, Pixly’s co-founder and chief operating officer. “Many consumers have been following the same YouTubers for years and have built a relationship with those creators, as opposed to something like TikTok, where it's much more scroll-based and you’re only on each video for a couple of minutes,” he said. “On YouTube, if I subscribe to somebody and they release a weekly video, I'm going to watch it every single week. It’s the TV of our generation.” Treading carefully Despite the over-the-top, sensationalized nature of these YouTubers’ stunts, most of them are essentially harmless. However, brands should still need to be cautious about which creators they work with and the stunts they sponsor, as they can potentially pose some legal risks. Last week, YouTuber and former Olympian Trevor Jacob pleaded guilty to a federal charge after intentionally crashing his airplane and attempting to hide the wreckage from the crash from federal investigators. Jacob admitted that he deliberately crashed the plane as part of a “sponsorship from a company that sold various products, including a wallet,” according to a press release from the U.S. Attorney's Office of the Central District of California. The original video documenting the plane crash, uploaded in December 2021, contains a clip of him promoting the wallet brand, which has since been edited out of the video. Santa Barbara County man who deliberately crashed airplane for YouTube video views agrees to plead guilty to obstructing federal investigation https://t.co/zjjIVfImry— US Attorney L.A. (@USAO_LosAngeles) May 11, 2023 Though the press release doesn’t identify the wallet brand, the Los Angeles Times identifies the brand as The Ridge Wallet, stating that Jacob promoted an affiliate link for the brand in his original version of the video while standing next to his plane. The Ridge Wallet did not respond to Ad Age’s request for comment. Ad Age Breakout Brand Leaders New award honors the people behind emerging brands Enter here TV-quality productions Still, brands such as Muddy Bites and Pizza Hut, and the mobile game “Brawl Stars,” have sponsored YouTubers’ stunts with little incident. In fact, for “Brawl Stars” developer Supercell, partnering with MrBeast may have been as impactful as advertising with streaming giant Netflix. Of all the YouTubers who aim to draw in viewers with the promise of absurd, over-the-top stunts, MrBeast has become the most ubiquitous. His partnership with “Brawl Stars” effectively acted as a catalyst for the rash of brands sponsoring YouTubers’ extravagant exploits. In the pop culture frenzy following the release of Netflix’s series “Squid Game,” Donaldson recreated the life-or-death game show at the center of the series (minus the death), inviting over 450 people to compete in several challenges for the chance to win $456,000. That cash prize was provided, in part, by Finnish video game developer Supercell, which sponsored Donaldson’s video to promote the company’s mobile game “Brawl Stars,” which has a similar “battle royale” format. Donaldson states in the video that the stunt cost $3.5 million to produce—likely more than Netflix spent on a single episode of “Squid Game,” which reportedly cost the company $21 million to produce the entire season. Donaldson’s video amassed over 100 million views in just the week after its release, bringing viewership of Donaldson’s production close to the original Netflix series, which had 111 million viewers in the month following its release. (Netflix users, however, tuned into “Squid Game” for a total of 1.6 billion hours in the show's first month on the platform, while Donaldson's video was viewed for an average of roughly 20 million hours in its first week.) For Supercell, sponsoring Donaldson’s TV-quality production translated into immediate impacts, with global downloads of the game “Brawl Stars” surging by 41% in the week following the video’s release, according to Sensor Tower data. In that same timeframe, player spending on in-game items more than doubled, with consumers around the world paying over $8.2 million that week alone. Though it’s unclear how much Supercell paid Donaldson for the partnership—Supercell didn’t respond to requests for comment—the game developer and “Brawl Stars” are featured heavily throughout the video, with the game’s logo emblazoned across the ball holding the $456,000 cash prize and looming over a nail-biting challenge where players attempt to cross a glass bridge without plummeting into a pit of foam blocks below. Additionally, Donaldson works a lengthy ad read into the midpoint of the video, interspersed with clips of footage from one of the challenges. “If you yell, ‘Thank you, Brawl Stars,’ before you throw, I hear you’ll flip it,” Donaldson said in the video as contestants play the Korean game ddakji, where two players compete to flip over a folded piece of paper lying on the ground by throwing another piece of paper at it. Those papers, of course, are marked with the “Brawl Stars” logo. And, in the video, the players heed Donaldson’s advice, shouting, “Thank you, Brawl Stars!” in unison.

Viral YouTube stunts—how brands are partnering with the creators behind them

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