Touchdown at 16 million views, not half bad, is it?
Yes, the Harlem Shake has touched that exhilarating number and it’s still counting. What did not even deserve 16 views has reached a mark of an unimaginable 16 million views.
Harlem Shake is a video which includes a bunch of guys dancing randomly to the Harlem Shake song. The popularity of this video has been touching new heights with every passing minute. So much so that big brands are now advertising their product using this concept. Pepsi has released 2 ads which has used Harlem as the music and the concept. Dr. Pepper and Lululemon have also used Harlem Shake but Pepsi has gone way ahead of them and shot 2 quickies, one featuring Pepsi cans and the other one with Nascar driver – Jeff Gordon.
Suzie Reider, YouTube’s head of industry development, says, “We are nowhere near the end of Harlem Shake mania.” She believes that Harlem Shake imitations will continue to entertain and stir us through the summer. Reider based her assessment on prior YouTube dance crazes, most notably 2007’s “Crank That,” one of the earliest but the one that went on for months. ‘Call me maybe’ another example of a video going sensational and big brands plunging in and using the popularity of the video for their own publicity.
Harlem Shake has engulfed colleges the most. Almost all colleges have gone public with their own version of the video. Interestingly, people have come up with versions, which are far apart from the original. Reider also believes that the consumers are not really put off since the brands have jumped to take Harlem Shake to the next level.
She adds “If you look at the comments, you don’t see a lot of cynicism,” she says. David Waterhouse, says “The fad is far from over. The hard thing with ‘Harlem Shake’ is that it keeps evolving into new parodies, rather than just being one video”. In fact, the original is nowhere near the most shared. So it is hard to say it is slowing down. Certainly, the parodies are becoming less frequent, but there are thousands of them.”
Maybe the day is not far when we can expect Harlem Shake to touch more than 1.3billion viewer mark and beat the Gangnam Style. Do you think the harlem shake can step up to the level of Gangnam Style? Let us know in the comments section below.
Here are some more of the harlem shake videos, go ahead, have fun: