Viral Trends on a Local Level
Context:
In September of 2020 the internet was fascinated by this video of a man drinking cranberry juice while riding a longboard to the iconic tune of “Dreams” by Fleetwood Mac. The original TikTok post currently has more than 78 million views and sparked the start of a wildly-popular internet trend with notable figures, such as Mick Fleetwood of Fleetwood Mac himself, recreating the video to the joy of fans around the world.
With help from one of my friends (who happens to be a Laurier Alum), we set out to give the trend our best shot by recreating the video at a recognizable location in our city. With cranberry juice and longboard prepared, I met Christian at Laurier’s campus on a gloomy October Sunday.
End result:
After filming and editing our video to reflect the original as best as possible, I sent it off in an email to a Laurier employee that works in the marketing department. The video was met with positive feedback and posted later that day. In January 2021 I was informed that, despite being posted in October, our video had achieved the highest overall reach on Laurier’s official Instagram account in 2020 and additionally had the second highest engagement of 2020 as well. View the video below:
These trends often serve as a lighthearted entertainment, especially in a year that was otherwise bombarded with negative news (we’re looking at you, 2020). Although the existence of this video and others like it is seemingly trivial, there is always potential to utilize the traffic boost they cause to direct the attention of viewers elsewhere.
If anything, this serves as an example of how creating timely and locally-targeted content (despite minimal effort - sorry Christian) can lead to impressive reach.