The Drum Awards for Marketing - Extended Deadline

-d -h -min -sec

Author

By Natan Edelsburg, SVP

July 11, 2015 | 4 min read

Social media sensations Todrick Hall (nearly 220 million views on YouTube whose show "Todrick" will premiere on MTV soon) and The Fat Jewish (over 5 million followers on Instagram) teamed up to rap about Big Data with Viacom Velocity, the media company's social TV advertising arm that Found Remote covered back in April. The video (above) which already has over 70,000 views is a fun ode to the latest buzziest term to enter the TV boardroom.

Found Remote interviewed Niels Schuurmans, EVP of Viacom Velocity Creative Content Solutions about the video.

Found Remote: Why was Viacom Velocity involved in this? Were any brands involved?

Niels Schuurmans: At Viacom Velocity we have a deep understanding of emerging marketing trends and new industry focuses, so we launched our YouTube Channel earlier this year as a platform to share content that infuses our unique editorial point of view on what’s trending in the media today. We started with the release of the Social Influence Parody Video and we continue to look for opportunities to spark conversation in fun and energetic ways.

Big Data is a big part of almost every conversation we're having internally and with clients, partners and agencies around reaching fans and consumers. We didn't want to just talk the talk when it came to Big Data, we wanted to show that we understand it in our own fun and unique way.

We thought that having this conversation through the filter of a rap music video parody would be unique coming from the company that made the music video genre famous. Rap is also a fun way to touch on all of the data jargon being thrown around that most people don't understand. Viacom Velocity approaches everything with an entertainment lens, even if we're delivering commentary on capabilities and trends.

We didn't work with specific brands on this, it was a piece created to share with our partners to demonstrate that we understand how Data has become part of the collective daily conversation.

FR: Why did The Fat Jewish and Todrick work together?

NS: When we wrote the piece The Fat Jewish and Todrick immediately came to mind which really helped drive the creative. They fit the roles perfectly and have massive fan bases. Part of what we do at Viacom Velocity is to identify great social talent that has a strong relationship to our audience and create content with them. Fat Jewish has almost 5 million followers on Instagram and Todrick Hall has over 216 million views on YouTube plus a new show launching on MTV this August. They were absolutely perfect for this video and great to work with so it was a win-win for us.

FR: How did the collaboration work?

NS: Viacom Velocity approached The Fat Jewish and Todrick with the creative and our original music and lyrics and they fused their own individual style to it.

FR: What were the social components?

NS: For social we're releasing it on our own Viacom Velocity YouTube Channel. We're also pushing it out through some of our network social platforms. Our intention is to share it with our client and agency partners for their enjoyment.

Big Data is part of the common language of our business now. Everyone is hyper focused on how we use Big Data to better reach audiences. This is a fun way to celebrate something everyone in the industry is experiencing and tapping into something that is part of the advertising zeitgeist.

You can access the Found Remote hub here. Sign up to receive The Drum's Daily US newsletter.

Future of TV The Fat Jewish Viacom

More from Future of TV

View all