This is Badlands Booker. A former professional eater (think 4th of July Nathan’s Hot Dog Competition) turned YouTuber. His YouTube channel, “Badlands Chugs,” has 1.27M subscribers and consists of videos of Booker “chugging” large amounts of various liquids, very quickly. Isn’t the internet a weird place?
In late 2018, Badlands Booker noticed one of those sudden, weird internet trends that generates massive buzz. The trend was people talking, drinking, and posting about Pepsi mixed with Milk. The trend correlated with actress Penny Marshall passing away, because apparently her character on Laverne & Shirley drank this concoction on the show. Within three days of Penny’s passing, Booker had a Pepsi Milk video up on his YouTube channel.
Booker’s three previous YouTube posts averaged 200,000 views. The Pepsi Milk video has 1.6 million. If you watched the video, you’ll notice that it is very simple, low budget, and probably not very time consuming for Mr. Booker. In other words, with minimal effort, by paying attention and reacting to a trend, Badlands Chugs drove more than a million extra sets of eyeballs to his content.
Nothing makes me roll my eyes more than a brand saying that a trend like this is silly, stupid, random or not worth their time. Because Booker just proved it doesn’t take a lot of time to capitalize on this sort of trend. And in case you haven’t realized it yet, most of your consumers like silly, stupid, random things.
As marketers and business leaders, we’ve somehow managed to convince ourselves that being “reactive” is a bad thing, simply because it’s the perceived opposite of one of our favorite buzzwords- “proactive.”
Of course it would be wonderful to consistently predict the future and launch marketing campaigns based on tomorrow’s top internet memes or next weeks number one trending YouTube videos. But you tell me what data source, what modeling tool, what predictive analytics would have told my business to expect that in 2009, millions of people would start planking? Whether it’s the “I’m gonna tell my kids” meme or “The Dress” controversy, the internet age provides society with a constant stream of moments that are culture-defining.
If you’ve got a crystal ball, great. If not, great marketers should pride themselves on quickly reacting to these trends and riding the wave of interest and attention they create.
Just a few weeks back another weird, buzz-worthy moment took hold of the internet. It started with a commercial from Peloton where actress Monica Ruiz gave a very emotional portrayal of a young woman who was gifted an exercise bike by her husband.
I thought the commercial was a little strange. Some people thought the commercial was offensive. Some people thought the people who thought the commercial was offensive were just stirring up trouble. Some people thought the people who thought the people were just stirring up trouble, were being insensitive. I’m not here to mediate or diagnose the true meaning of this ad, but what I do know, is that when a lot of people have a lot of opinions, it creates a buzz.
And within days of this “controversy” driving eyeballs across the web, another brand decided to embrace that ugly-little-world, “reactionary.” Ryan Reynolds and his gin company, Aviation Gin, immediately hired the actress at the center of the Peloton ad. Now, suddenly, the conversation, the buzz, and the eyeballs shift to a totally unrelated gin company.
And if we’re being honest, not unlike the Badlands Pepsi Milk video, the gin ad isn’t anything special… It’s not big-budget. It’s not especially elaborate, or funny, or buzzworthy. But again, like the Pepsi Milk video, it was on-trend and culturally-relevant, and because of that, it’s driven millions and millions of views.
Embrace the weird, the strange, the edgy, the controversial, and most importantly, pay attention. Or hire yourself some 18 year old kid who understands the internet better than we ever could. Do you have kids in middle school or high school? Ask them what’s happening on YouTube and Instagram and Tik Tok. Ask them what memes and gifs they’re texting. Find a way to pay attention, because catching a trend, and reacting quickly, can be an easy and cost efficient way to have a massive impact.