5 Corporate Brands That Are Making Waves On YouTube

YouTube is probably one of the most neglected sites on the web when it comes to online marketing. It is the second biggest search engine on the net and the usage statistics are really just mindboggling (6 billion hours of video watch per month?). Video is also a fantastic tool for marketing, seeing as it allows you to convey so much information and even emotion in a short space of time compared with other mediums. And yet huge brands like Amazon have YouTube channels that go for months without updates.

Maybe YouTube has been around so long that it doesn’t have the appeal of something like Instagram? Or perhaps the amount of time and effort involved in creating videos is what’s putting brands off? Either way, they’re missing out on a huge potential market and a lot of opportunities, as these businesses demonstrate:

Microsoft

Microsoft‘s main YouTube Channel could be more active, but they actually have done a few things right. Their recent lesson on Quantum Computing for instance delivers real value to their viewers (i.e. it’s not just marketing) whereas their ‘visions of the future’ videos were shared by many tech companies a few years back. They also have a separate channel for their Surface line of devices, where they showcase entrepreneurs, start-ups and creative using the device in their daily routine.

Red Bull

Red Bull is incredibly good at Social Media and online promotion and their YouTube channel exemplifies this incredibly well. Their channel is incredibly active with multiple videos posted per day and they do a great job of selling an ext0reme and action-packed lifestyle.

Pepsi Max

Pepsi Max is using a similar strategy to Red Bull and post a number of highly sharable and action packed videos. They’re slightly less active, but they do a great job of building up to big events and videos – as they demonstrated with their awesome human loop-de-loop promotion.

Starbucks

Starbucks successfully sells a desirable lifestyle to appeal to a particular clientele. They do this by showing inspirational, creative, humorous and cultural videos that are typically under a minute in length and filmed in great quality. They combine this with promotions on Twitter and on the app stores in order to create synergy across their platforms.

GoPro

You would imagine a company selling cameras to do well on a platform revolving around video and for GoPro that is certainly the case. They upload amazingly action packed videos in great definition (especially now the GoPro HERO4 provides 4K video capture) and what’s best is that many of their videos are user submitted. That means minimal time and maximum engagement!

Special Mention: Old Spice

My special mention should go to Old Spice. While we’ve talked about their campaigns on this blog several times before, they are still worthy of a place on this list thanks to their genuinely hilarious adverts that have been a great hit across YouTube. They demonstrate how well humor works on the web. Far from just using YouTube as a ‘dumping ground’ for ads, they’ve also added a more interactive element with exclusive content.