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Episode: The Power of #WithMe

Author: Think with Google / Gimlet Creative
Duration: 00:18:46

Episode Shownotes

People are turning to video in more ways and in more moments than ever before. The staggering amount of content available means people can do more with video than they’ve ever done: learn a new skill, get info straight from the source, connect with communities and creators, or just simply

get stuff done. In this episode, we’ll learn why marketers should be paying attention to YouTube trends like “with me” videos, and what they can reveal about authentically connecting with viewers. We’ll also explore why advertising on video can help brands to drive discovery on a massive scale...that still feels personal. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Full Transcript

00:00:00 Speaker_01
It's a skippable world, not just on YouTube. Everyone's got their finger on the trigger. So what are you going to do to tell stories in ways that will capture and connect with someone and what they really want to see immediately?

00:00:14 Speaker_00
I'm Tess Vigeland with Gimlet Creative. You're listening to the Think with Google podcast. On this show, we talk about how marketers can stay ahead of the curve. And today, Our focus is YouTube trends. You've probably heard of ASMR or viral flash mobs.

00:00:35 Speaker_00
We'll dive deep into one highly personal trend and find out the best ways for marketers to capitalize on what's buzzing on the platform.

00:00:50 Speaker_05
So my name is Jamie, and I am currently a emergency medicine resident. And on the side, I make Study With Me videos on YouTube.

00:00:59 Speaker_00
That's Jamie Lee. She first started posting videos of herself five years ago, when she created her lifestyle channel, The Strive to Fit. Jamie talked about her experience in med school and also made workout, fashion, and cooking videos.

00:01:16 Speaker_00
A few years back, she committed to making a video every day of December.

00:01:20 Speaker_05
But one day... I kind of ran out of an idea of what to do, and I felt like I was talking a lot about studying and giving a lot of study tips to my viewers.

00:01:29 Speaker_05
So I thought that it would be a good idea to kind of sit down and record myself study, and somebody else can watch me and follow along, or maybe it'll help them

00:01:41 Speaker_00
That's right, Jamie makes videos, often more than two hours long, of herself studying at her desk.

00:01:51 Speaker_03
Hi everyone, welcome to another Study With Me video. Today I have a couple writing assignments.

00:01:56 Speaker_00
If you're like me, you might be wondering, who sits around and watches someone else study, like for two hours? Turns out, a lot of people.

00:02:08 Speaker_05
There's at least a couple of videos where there's more than a million views for the Study With Me videos.

00:02:14 Speaker_00
Jamie's Study With Me videos were so popular that she ended up creating a whole new channel for them three years ago called The Strive Studies. It now has over 12 million views.

00:02:28 Speaker_00
But she's not the only person posting videos of herself doing everyday tasks on YouTube. She's part of a trend called With Me.

00:02:37 Speaker_02
Okay, so there's clean with me and then subsets like do laundry with me, cook with me.

00:02:43 Speaker_08
Draw with me.

00:02:44 Speaker_02
Come run errands with me kind of things. Grocery shop with me. I love like a get ready with me. Get ready with me. There's also un-get ready with me.

00:02:51 Speaker_08
Hack with me.

00:02:53 Speaker_02
Where people like take off their makeup and do their skincare routine.

00:02:56 Speaker_08
You've got paint with me, you've got pen pal with me.

00:03:00 Speaker_02
I found them to be very calming to watch just like a person alone in their room spend 45 minutes putting makeup on. Not only learning how to do something, but also being empowered to try something on your own.

00:03:15 Speaker_04
It's a fascinating thing to see like a human being be a human being and be that willing to share that much of their life.

00:03:25 Speaker_00
All right, just how many With Me fans could there possibly be? According to YouTube trends, these videos have been watched four billion times since 2007.

00:03:36 Speaker_00
So we wanted to talk to someone who studies trends like this to try to understand what's attracting all those eyeballs.

00:03:43 Speaker_08
I've definitely watched Clean With Me videos when I know that we need to clean up the apartment. And there is something about it that absolutely works, where I'm watching someone else vacuum and everything looks so nice and clean when they're done.

00:03:54 Speaker_08
And I want that. I want that sensation in my own life.

00:03:58 Speaker_00
That's Kevin Alaka. He's the global head of culture and trends at YouTube. It's his team's job to help people find and understand what's popular on the platform.

00:04:08 Speaker_08
And... When someone needs to go explain the Harlem Shake on TV, I go and do that.

00:04:14 Speaker_00
Kevin knows his way around a YouTube trend. So I asked him to dig into some armchair psychology around why people are watching these With Me videos. He says there are a couple of different reasons.

00:04:27 Speaker_00
In one example, those Get Ready With Me videos tend to be kind of voyeuristic. The viewer gets to follow a creator's life and maybe pick up some tips along the way.

00:04:38 Speaker_00
On the other hand, with videos like Clean With Me or Study With Me, it's more about getting inspired to do what the YouTuber is actually doing.

00:04:49 Speaker_08
You know, sometimes we just need to be motivated in some way. We know there's something we need to do that's maybe going to be lonely or it's going to be boring, and so we need that sort of motivation to get over the hump.

00:05:01 Speaker_00
In other words, these videos are akin to a friend or an accountability buddy. And they're usually pretty down to earth and simply made with minimal edits and maybe some background music.

00:05:13 Speaker_00
And it makes sense that people are making really personal videos like this on YouTube.

00:05:18 Speaker_08
In a very high level, YouTube was always quite personal. If you think about the very first video that was uploaded to the platform, it was me at the zoo. It was Javed Karim, one of YouTube's founders.

00:05:27 Speaker_08
And I think it was always about, like, capturing and connecting around personal experiences. I think part of what makes those viral videos so successful is that they allowed you to have a personal connection with someone else.

00:05:38 Speaker_08
They actually facilitated interaction with someone else.

00:05:41 Speaker_00
And what's more personal than watching someone clean their apartment or take off their makeup after a long day?

00:05:48 Speaker_08
They're basically documenting some task or some activity that is otherwise generally a solitary activity and turning it into a communal activity for people to consume it and watch.

00:06:00 Speaker_00
But With Me videos aren't just about sharing what are usually solitary activities. They're reaching viewers at a very specific moment, when they're choosing to focus on a specific task that they care about.

00:06:14 Speaker_00
So this is clearly relevant to marketers, but the question is, how do you best leverage these kinds of YouTube phenomena?

00:06:22 Speaker_08
I'm not an ad expert, but certainly from my years of studying trends on the platform, there are a few things that jump out to me as sort of obvious steps.

00:06:31 Speaker_00
After the break, Kevin walks us through those steps. And we'll also hear from someone who is an ad expert, Sadie Thoma, Director of U.S. Creative Partnerships at Google.

00:06:42 Speaker_01
If I'm a cleaning brand, and I know that people are watching these with me cleaning videos for two hours, what am I doing about that?

00:06:58 Speaker_07
You're listening to the Think with Google podcast, brought to you by Google. At Think with Google, it's their mission to make marketers more knowledgeable by providing research, insights, and perspectives that change the way marketers do business.

00:07:11 Speaker_07
In this episode, we are talking about what marketers can learn from the highly personal videos that people are watching on YouTube.

00:07:18 Speaker_07
For more on what the world is watching, check out Google's special interactive data report at thinkwithgoogle.com slash personal. Again, that's thinkwithgoogle.com slash personal. Now back to the show.

00:07:38 Speaker_00
Welcome back. Before the break, we talked about the With Me trend on YouTube, where creators post videos of themselves doing everyday tasks like shopping or studying.

00:07:50 Speaker_00
With Me fans might tune in for voyeuristic entertainment, to learn tips, or for some encouragement to do the activity themselves.

00:07:58 Speaker_00
These videos feel authentic and personal, and they capture viewers in exactly the context that marketers hope to reach them. Kevin Alaka, YouTube's head of culture and trends, was just about to give us some advice.

00:08:13 Speaker_08
I think that there's a misconception that every time there's some new trend that, you know, as a marketer you need to then be jumping in on that trend and we need to do a thing that is that thing.

00:08:22 Speaker_00
He says one big reason these kinds of efforts can fail is that they feel forced and sort of fake.

00:08:29 Speaker_08
Your audience is very attuned to authentic expression and sussing out when expression is not authentic.

00:08:38 Speaker_00
And in order to deliver that authenticity that viewers crave, there are some corners you just can't cut.

00:08:46 Speaker_08
you actually have to sit down and watch stuff. And this is a step that a lot of people tend to skip because they either have their specific stuff they like to watch online or they don't necessarily understand the dynamics of the medium themselves.

00:08:58 Speaker_08
But when you do that, you're actually, you're already starting from a disadvantaged position.

00:09:03 Speaker_00
But it's not just about passively watching YouTube. Marketers have to understand why certain kinds of videos turn into trends, like the Study With Me videos we mentioned earlier, where people are tuning in for motivation and company.

00:09:17 Speaker_08
People are coming to these very isolated individual experiences that are associated with things that are important in their life. Some of those things have a deep connection to specific products that people might sell or services that might offer.

00:09:31 Speaker_08
But if you don't take the time to try to understand that context and try to understand the behaviors that motivate those things, you'll never be able to fully take advantage of the opportunity that they present.

00:09:43 Speaker_00
Let's consider another example, the ASMR trend. For those of you who don't know, ASMR stands for Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response. And it sounds a little something like this.

00:09:56 Speaker_08
This is Kevin Alaca coming to you from a cube inside the Google office.

00:10:01 Speaker_01
When people whisper into a microphone and do all these interesting types of auditory techniques to connect with people. That was Sadie Thoma again.

00:10:13 Speaker_01
If anyone remembers, last year for the Super Bowl, Michelob did an ad with Zoe Kravitz, which was ASMR-specific.

00:10:24 Speaker_00
In the ad, Zoe Kravitz makes ASMR-inspired sounds. She whispers into two different panned microphones, she grazes the bottom of a bottle against the table, and clinks her nails on the glass. It got a lot of buzz. It felt different.

00:10:40 Speaker_01
It felt different than other Super Bowl ads. For those in the world of YouTube and or ASMR trend, that was a way to say, wow, this brand actually knows what we're talking about over here. And it's something that we are all getting obsessed with.

00:10:58 Speaker_01
And now this brand understands that and is connecting and using it in a way that's just very honest and, you know, not trying to make fun of it, actually just leaning into it.

00:11:07 Speaker_00
And there's a reason it felt different. Having what seems like a niche ad like this play at the Super Bowl, it would have been unimaginable five years ago. Here's Kevin.

00:11:17 Speaker_08
that would have seemed so unusual, and it would have been so confusing to even just explain in a meeting to say, hey, we're gonna make an ad about ASMR.

00:11:28 Speaker_08
So it's interesting to me to see that there are brands that are saying, we know this seems weird for people who don't know what it is, but we get it, we understand what it is, and most importantly, we understand why the audience appreciates it, and so we're gonna play in that space and have fun in that space as well.

00:11:46 Speaker_00
And this approach of really understanding a YouTube phenomenon and why viewers are tuning in, it can work for other trends too.

00:11:53 Speaker_00
For example, Google and fashion house Kate Spade found a way to apply the unscripted, casual nature of With Me videos to the label's own branded content.

00:12:03 Speaker_00
Here's Sadie describing exactly how they did it, in particular, when store employees opened boxes of new merchandise.

00:12:11 Speaker_01
You know, they talked about the fact that they have some store associates that are just, they're so passionate about the brand, and they really look forward to getting those boxes and opening them up and seeing what goodies are inside that they can put out on shelf.

00:12:23 Speaker_01
And we said, well, what if we started just filming them? What if we, you know, really captured their excitement and their passion when they're opening up this, like, gift of sorts that's coming from, you know, the warehouse?

00:12:37 Speaker_00
So that's what they did. But here we go. And it worked. One video shows the manager of Kate Spade's Madison Avenue store tearing open a box in the stockroom and gushing over what she finds inside.

00:12:51 Speaker_06
Oh, this is what I like to call a piñata box. You never know what's in here. All right, first of all, we got a nice t-shirt here. Let's see what it says. That one got over 100,000 views. Oh, hello. Hit the jackpot.

00:13:09 Speaker_01
You know, these are not famous celebrities. These are not high-tech, high-polish produced videos.

00:13:17 Speaker_01
These are just authentic connections to say, if I'm a really Kate Spade brand lover, I would love to be that store associate opening that box and seeing what's the latest bright-colored accessory that I could get this month.

00:13:30 Speaker_00
Just to repeat, these videos did not include celebrities, and yet people still tuned in. This might surprise some marketers, but there's data to support it.

00:13:41 Speaker_00
Google partnered with Omnicom on a study in 2018 that found relating to people's passions was three times more important to viewers than whether the video featured famous actors.

00:13:53 Speaker_00
And it was over one and a half times more important than high production value. So brands can learn a lot from YouTubers, especially the more personal ways they're reaching their audiences.

00:14:06 Speaker_01
People want to feel connected to other people. If you're a brand, how would you open up a dialogue with your audience? How would you connect in an authentic way?

00:14:16 Speaker_01
How would you do something quote-unquote with them that would help them feel more connected?

00:14:24 Speaker_00
So how would you? Well, marketers can pick up on what influencers are doing, like talking directly to their fans on camera and responding to comments.

00:14:33 Speaker_01
You feel as if they're talking to you. And you feel that sense of, you know what, I feel as if I was to write a comment here, they might respond to it. And they do, by the way, a lot. It used to be back in the day, as we all know,

00:14:48 Speaker_01
Celebrities and quote-unquote spokespeople felt very difficult to reach. You know, you would never meet them. They would never know you or connect with you in any way. And now it feels very accessible.

00:15:05 Speaker_00
Creators can teach brands all kinds of ways to be more authentic when they are trying to connect with viewers. And don't underestimate the viewership. Get this. YouTube has over 2 billion monthly logged in users.

00:15:21 Speaker_00
And people are watching over a billion hours of video on it every day.

00:15:26 Speaker_01
People are on the platform. And as an advertiser, you could help launch and help illuminate new offerings that you have while you've got this captivated audience. It's an amazing platform to drive discovery. Just listen to Sadie's stat on this.

00:15:44 Speaker_01
Over 90% of YouTube viewers say that they discover new brands or products on YouTube.

00:15:51 Speaker_00
Over 90%! That's hard to ignore. Sadie says that everyone in the industry needs to be answering some really important questions.

00:16:03 Speaker_01
So as a marketer, what's your video strategy? How do we think about using sight, sound, and motion to connect with people, help them see our products, see our brand, see the creators or influencers who might be passionate about it?

00:16:20 Speaker_01
What is your data strategy and what is your video strategy to make sure that you are succeeding in this new digital storytelling world?

00:16:29 Speaker_00
And what does success look like in this new world? Sometimes it's as simple as having the right ad in the right place.

00:16:38 Speaker_01
We just do not live in a one-ad-fits-all world anymore. Back in the day, we watched TV, we all watched the same ads during the same Thursday night prime time, and we all saw the same thing together.

00:16:53 Speaker_01
And with the rise of digital and the rise of more signals that we're all putting out there, we've recognized that there's a smarter way to market, that it doesn't have to be a one-size-fits-all world anymore.

00:17:08 Speaker_00
The With Me trend teaches us that there truly is a video for everyone, and that brands don't need to invest in flashy videos with celebrity cameos to connect with their target customers.

00:17:20 Speaker_00
What they need to do is meet customers where they are, in ways that look and feel authentic. The Think with Google Podcast is brought to you by Google and Gimlet Creative. This episode was produced by Emily Shaw, Carrie-Anne Thomas, and Katie Shepard.

00:17:46 Speaker_00
Gabby Bulgarelli is our fact checker. We're edited by Andrea Bruce. Bumi Haddaka mixed this episode. Katherine Anderson is our technical director. Our theme is by Marcus Thorne Begala. Additional music from Marmoset, Billy Libby, and So Wiley.

00:18:01 Speaker_00
You can find us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen. And if you like what you've heard, share it with your friends and colleagues. We'll see you next week.