In Germany there is a growing number of self-made stars who create video content and upload it on YouTube. Over the last 2-3 years they could excite massive fan bases and have a continuously growing number of subscribers on their YouTube channels. Alberto Bruhn for example has 1.2mio subscribers whilst the global Coca-Cola channel can only count 230k.

The YouTube stars’ key to success: no glossy high-quality productions but unscripted and authentic content.

Eventually many young people built-up a deep relationship with them as they engage on eye level. They have a similar life, they speak the same lingo and they have the feeling that the YouTube stars could live just next door.

So today, these guys are the real influencers of Generation YouTube.

We equipped seven of Germany’s biggest YouTube-Stars with the new Sony Smartphone Xperia Z1. Altogether they combine more than 4.5mio YouTube-Subscribers. We developed an interconnected story to demonstrate the benefits in an authentic way. We created stories around the four most important features of the Smartphone but abstained from using any marketing buzzwords. The YouTube stars featured the benefits of the Sony Xperia just by using it. We created and uploaded 15 videos on all channels of the YouTube stars. All of the videos were linked together via an interactive playlist so you could easily all videos in a row.

Remember our targets:

a) gain the Generation YouTube’s attention for and engagement with the brand Sony Mobile

b) let them consider the Xperia Z1 as serious alternative to Apple or Samsung smartphones and make them fall in love with the brand.

Our results:

In less than 48 hours, we reached more than 2m views on the videos and it is still counting. Until today more than 1.7 million minutes of content have been watched. This means a view-through-rate of 71% giving a clear proof that people loved the content. Far above Google quality benchmarks!

Moreover, 91% of all viewers liked the videos on YouTube. More than 30.000 comments in total underline the engagement of our target audience.

That’s “fall in love” in the age of Generation YouTube.

The best proof for a raised brand love comes from the biggest YouTube star we have in Germany: Simon Desue with more than 1.5 Million Facebook Fans, 1m YouTube subscribers and 180.000 followers on Instagram, loved the videos so much, that he produced an extra video on his own account and uploaded it on his social channels. By this we generated free value of approx. 350.000€.