Red Bull, Google Declared Top Companies For Branded Social Video

Branded social video–which can be defined as any video content uploaded by a company to YouTube, Facebook, Vimeo, or any other social media site–is becoming more omnipresent as companies attempt to harness the power of the ‘trend.’ A good branded video campaign can win praise for a company, with the Ads Worth Spreading series providing ten worthy examples.

One of the groups that tracks branded social video is goviral, which was acquired by AOL last year. Goviral recently released an infographic detailing the top ten leaders in branded video. Unsurprisingly, Red Bull came in at #1; the energy drink giant has built an enormous library of extreme sports clips on its YouTube Original channel. The recent Red Bull Stratos event, which drew millions of viewers (in addition to the several millions more who consumed Red Bull’s media content during the significant pre-Stratos buzz

Google finished second, helped without a doubt by the Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber endorsement videos for Google Chrome that have been posted on YouTube. It also didn’t hurt that Google, you know, owns YouTube (so they’re in the best position to market their brand well on the platform.)

Check out the entire infographic below. Goviral also released a top 100 list (in boring ol’ text form) that can be viewed here.

One theme among the top performing brands is the way in which edgy, unusual, or flat out weird branded content performed particularly well. “The results of goviral’s Social Video Equity Report prove that when it comes to branded content, fortune favours the brave”, said Mads Holmen, Planning Director at goviral. “Brands like Red Bull, Old Spice and Nike are risk-takers, constantly disrupting what’s expected to spark agenda-setting conversation. An effective social video strategy can elevate a brand beyond the product, creating an experience consumers really want to part of.” These results should continue to encourage brands to create campaigns that are more creative and fresher than anything we’ve seen so far.