How Did Gangnam Style Go VIral?

We're all feeling sufficiently fed up with Gangnam Style, be it the original or the enormous number of spoofs, but how did Pys hit the big time? This is about more than one Korean pop star becoming a global phenomenal it’s about our obsession with the word viral. How does something go from a YouTube video to a viral video? This week has seen the release of hilarious spoof video by agency St John’s, based in Toronto, that mocks the growing trend in buying views to make your brands video at least appear to be a viral hit. 

There was no gaming when it came to the spreading of Gangnam Style, this was the real deal; a video that people wanted their friends, family and distance acquaintances to share in the enjoyment of.  

The label behind Gangnam, YG Entertainment, had a plan long before the video went live. They knew they wanted to break into new markets and started building a platform they would be able to push content out on. Looking at their various YouTube channels they had 2.5 million subscribers pre-Gangnam and had achieved in the region of 1.6 billion views of musicians’ videos across those channels. Having these subscribers is key and meant they could get a high number of views in a short space of time helping them quickly gain shares and get featured in YouTube’s daily chart. 

Having an audience is a good start but you need them all to share it and watch it, again and again. YG Entertainment did their research when it came to casting the video and by featuring popular celebrities from South Korea they knew this would get the media’s attention. They had a famous entertainer who is the chap thrusting in the lift, the guy in the yellow suit is a renowned comedian and the kid is popular from Korea’s Got Talent. All helping it debut at number in the Korean Pop Chart and gain 500k views on its launch day of 15th July. 

Over the next month the video starts to build global momentum, but the volume of tweets and searches rise at a far slower rate than later on in the campaign and predominantly features traffic and search emerging from South Korea.

In mid-July there are then a few further tweets from @AllKPop, relating to the video's general profile, sales of the song as a ringtone doing well etc, but nothing out of the ordinary. Although much has been made of the impact of various celebrity supportive tweets, my interpretation is that mainstream media coverage initially brought it to many people's, including celebrities attention. 

On 30th July Gawker wrote it up leading to 19k in Facebook likes/shares. I believe this lead to Billboard writing it up and the barrage of well followed celebrity tweets that followed, all pushing lots of traffic to YouTube. 

There was no stopping Pys after this with coverage in Time Magazine, Mashable followed. The next big announcement came on September 3rd when a YouTube video showing Psy drinking a shot with Scooter Braun, who is best known for managing Justin Bieber. This shot wasn’t just some friends catching up over a drink it was the start of them working together and marked Gangnam for big things in the states. 

Activity over the next two weeks triggered the biggest spike in the entire campaign, as Scooter Braun made some inspired media bookings. Alongside these bookings, Scooter also has a contact book to die for and his own artists have some of the largest marketing databases in the world, all of whom 

Psy now had access to.

Thanks to Scooter Braun, Psy appeared at the MTV Awards as a last minute guest and alongside another of Scooter's clients, before going on to make his first appearance on the TV Show Ellen alongside Britney Spears. Britney (of course) tweeted this, creating a huge 1.3m tweets containing the term "Gangnam Style" over those few days alone.

Just as growth started to slow again, Scooter got Psy a spot on NBC Today show, and a second appearance on Ellen, that triggered a final but forceful spike in searches, tweets and video likes.

The very final peak, the icing on the cake so to speak, was when the Guinness World Records team issued a release relating to Psy breaking all known records for the number of views that the video has had. At this point, everything slows and a slow decline begins.

A host of "hilarious" copycat videos then began flooding YouTube and Twitter and the media is seemingly giving all of them air time, but this cannot buck the overall downward trend in terms of consumer interest, searches and tweets.

If this has been too wordy for you here's a video summarising Gangnam's rise to fame with me and the boss.

(via)