Social Media Marketing - Collateral Damage

These days with the evolution of technology YouTube has become a part of every day life, especially for young people – taking into consideration it can be rare in todays society to find kids between the age of 4 – 10 years old without access to a tablet.

I have a couple of friends who are fairly active content creators on YouTube, and you may read more about them in some of my future posts. One in particular that I would like to speak about now goes by the name UnlistedLeaf – he runs a Pokémon card themed channel and currently boasts a whopping 1.6 million subscribers. Given the theme of the channel UnlistedLeaf has segmented his target audience (primarily) by demographic and releases censored content that is appropriate for viewers of any age – a very wise decision.

On YouTube it is very easy to quantify data through the vast stats available to even the general public – for example: views, likes/dislikes and of course subscribers. Due to UnlistedLeaf’s amazing subscriber base and consistent viewership numbers he has also assisted in advertising certain products (often Pokémon related) in some of his videos.

I managed to dig up a video from a couple of months ago on his channel that I remembered seeing amid the recent fidget spinner craze, where a company sent him a few Pokémon themed fidget spinners. In the video UnlistedLeaf reads a letter that mentions how he opened one in an earlier video, and these items began flying off the shelves; said company had sent their whole range of items to be opened on camera and advertise to UnlistedLeaf’s Pokémon crazy audience. Given his large and very specific audience this was a perfect opportunity for this small niche company to get some exposure and advertise their products.

By sending highly renowned content creators products related to what they do, it is a great opportunity for collateral damage – by advertising for these companies, as well as giving the creators more monetised content to post on their channels.