If you haven’t heard of the Harlem Shake, you need to brush up on cultural phenomena. According to the Urban Dictionary, the Harlem Shake is “An eccentric upper body dance move that involves the shaking of the upper torso and shoulders.” Since February of this year this “dance,” which began as a viral video attracting millions of viewers, has spawned more than 12,000 different versions on YouTube.
So it should come as no surprise that major brands, including Pepsi, Intel, and lululemon, among others, have leveraged the Harlem Shake in social media. Unmetric’s Harlem Shake infographic details the huge amount of YouTube and Facebook activity surrounding the craze, including more than 5 million views of Pepsi’s Harlem Shake video featuring racecar driver Jeff Gordon and his crew.
If you’d like to see some of the Harlem Shake videos from major brands, Business Insider has compiled 13 of them. While several companies featured their own employees in the videos, TopShop featured (what else?) supermodels and Red Bull featured skydivers:
On the trademark front, we found two recent filings for Harlem Shake in the U.S. One initialized on December 3, 2012 is in International Class 43 (food/restaurant services). The second, filed on February 20, 2013, is in International Class 16 (heat transfer paper; iron-on transfers). Here’s the record from the Corsearch platform:
Just like “Call Me Maybe” and Gangnam Style, even the Harlem Shake has begun to fade, so there’s no doubt that social media marketers are ready to pounce on the next big trend. Any ideas that you’d like to share?
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Thanks for the mention! We monitor over 6,000 big brands and to date have tracked over 140 brands that have uploaded their own Harlem Shake video. Some are certainly better than others! More recent analysis shows that Red Bull is fast catching up with Pepsi for total number of views.
Thanks,
Peter