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With more than 1.7M followers on Instagram, Bang Energy has made a name for itself as a premiere energy drink in not only the food and drink industry but on social media too. With their booming popularity, Bang Energy has not only become America’s top growing energy drink but has become the #1 overall growth beverage in the entire non-alcoholic beverage industry – beating out multi-billion-dollar business giants. Contributing to their success, Bang Energy dedicates much of its advertising and marketing spend to online spaces such as Instagram and YouTube through top influencers.
Download the full Bang Energy Campaign Teardown
To put it into perspective, NeoReach conducted the Social Intelligence Insights Report for Q1 2020 to provide analyzed data from the US and Canada that was pulled from over 6,000 YouTube videos indicating brand partnership. Through this report, it was found that Bang Energy snagged the number two spot as one of the top 5 spenders on YouTube, putting much of their marketing strategy into influencer marketing on the video-sharing platform to promote their brand and products.
Bang Energy
Introduced in 2012, Bang is an American brand of energy drinks made by Vital Pharmaceuticals, or VPX, which also manufactures sports supplements and performance beverages. Mainly, Bang targets fitness enthusiasts and college students who can benefit the most from boosted energy levels.
Maintaining a large social media presence, CEO Jack Owoc recruits plenty of top influencers as Bang Energy Select Athletes through their Bang Influencers Ambassador Program to regularly promote the brand, its new flavors, and the products’ overall benefits. To keep viewers entertained, these influencers often sport vibrant outfits with the Bang logo and create fun dance videos or skits with the products. Through most of these promotions, Bang reminds users of how their energy products act as a healthier alternative to other brands, as their products contain no sugars, zero calories, and no artificial coloring – it’s even in their Instagram bio.
Top Spender
From the 1,232 brands analyzed, the food and drink industry turned out to be one of the top 10 industries with the highest spend on YouTube, spending a total of $11.7M. Surpassing a reach of 1M, the industry also amassed 90M views and 4M likes on its total 408 sponsored videos. The top 5 food and drink brands were able to reach over 81M views spread across 80 influencers, meaning plenty of hungry consumers turned to YouTube for a recommendation – and it paid off well. Check out more of these metrics below on the Food and Drink industry:
More specifically, Bang Energy occupied second place in the top 5 highest spenders on YouTube overall by spending close to $8M. By partnering with 19 influencers over a span of 141 total sponsored videos, they came out as the highest food and drink spender. Indicated in NeoReach’s report, Bang Energy is 72% of the combined top 5 influencer marketing budgets for the entire industry.
With YouTube spend 7 times greater than the next highest spender, Bang totals to $7.7M. At this influencer marketing investment, Bang Energy was able to reach an audience size equivalent to 150% of Epic Games, who spent nearly $3M more over Q1, with less than half the number of videos. Achieving massive success with their chosen influencers, Bang Energy had a total reach of 954,721,600 and brought in 58,180,458 views and 4,153,996 total likes over the 141 videos. Overall, they racked up $7.7M in IMV, had an IMV average of $54,715.96 and 412,627 average views.
Working with Influencers
According to the Social Intelligence Insights Report, the food and drink industry boasts the highest reach by top influencers among the 3 highest industry spenders. With nearly 40M subscribers between the top influencers Bang worked with, they have double the reach of the gaming industry and 9 times greater reach than tech industry top influencers. It was also reported that Bang Energy spends more on influencers than RedBull, Monster, and Rockstar combined.
As the highest food and drink spender, Bang Energy made it their mission to work with well-known influencers. To promote their products, Bang sponsored entertainment, comedy, and gaming videos, and provided discount codes for the influencer’s viewers. This unique discount code provided new users with a 25% off discount on the Bang Energy website. Also, these promotions called for all viewers to follow CEO Jack Owoc on Instagram along with Bang’s official page. For more broken-down information, check out this table that details the total number of videos each influencer posted for Bang Energy.
| Influencer Handle | Number of Videos Posted |
|---|---|
| DangMattSmith | 24 |
| Reaction Time | 23 |
| Danielle Cohn | 10 |
| Patty Mayo | 10 |
| JOOGSQUAD PPJT | 9 |
| Zach Clayton | 9 |
| Free Time | 8 |
| Infinite | 7 |
| Nick Bean | 7 |
| TFIL | 6 |
| Riceman | 5 |
| Brandon Westenberg | 4 |
| Hailey Orona | 4 |
| HoomanTV | 4 |
| Cannaestia | 3 |
| Duke Dennis | 3 |
| Deestroying | 2 |
| Disney Docket | 2 |
| Brecci | 1 |
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Standout Content and Influencers
Throughout the campaign, there were standout influencers that produced either the most content or produced content with the highest amount of views, reach, and IMV. These videos were mainly geared towards younger male audiences amongst the entertainment category. This way, Bang worked with popular creators that each drew in a similar viewer demographic to their own social media pages, increasing the chance of the drawing in new users and followers.
The information featured in the table below was pulled from the standout sponsored content posted between January and March of 2020 on YouTube by standout creators identified in the Q1 2020 report.
| Influencer/Handle Name | Total Views | Total IMV | Total Reach |
|---|---|---|---|
| DangMattSmith | 2,203,892 | $277,919.36 | 10,500,000 |
| Infinite | 1,925,893 | $215,174.44 | 14,400,000 |
| Reaction Time | 1,741,483 | $209,353.14 | 14,800,000 |
| Patty Mayo | 1,655,555 | $177,807.90 | 7,900,000 |
| JOOGSQUAD PPJT | 766,169 | $159,342.02 | 5,140,000 |
DangMattSmith is a successful family-friendly comedy YouTuber that posts videos every other day. His content, mostly reaction videos, have earned him 11.7M subscribers and 2.03B views on his channel. Infinite is another comedy YouTuber that specializes in reaction videos. He currently has 15.7M subscribers and 2.7B views on the platform.
If you love reaction videos, challenges, and overall hilarious videos, check out Reaction Time. His channel is extremely popular on YouTube, bringing in 15.3M subscribers and 4.1B views. Patty Mayo is a Bang Energy Elite Ambassador that features videos on bounty hunting. His channel currently has 8.57M subscribers and 818M views. JOOGSQUAD is run by Jack Tenney, a.k.a. “10E”, who makes crazy adventure videos. He brings in an impressive 5.4M subscribers and 841M views on his channel.
Final Results
The Bang Energy Q1 Report Data states that this campaign drew in $7,714,950.14 in IMV and 58,180,458 total views on YouTube. DangMattSmith, Infinite, and Reaction Time came out as standout content creators and brought in the highest numbers in terms of IMV, reach, and engagement.
Psst. Want to see how they did in Q2? Download the YouTube Influencer Marketing Global Spend Report Q2 2020!
According to 52-week sales data from IRI’s March 2019 report, it showed Bang Energy’s revenue at $440M. Most recently, in April 2020 when the video content for the campaign wrapped up, it was reported that Bang Energy struck a deal with PepsiCo to allow the company to distribute Bang in the U.S. This deal is now expected to allow Bang to thrive even more in the food and drink industry after the brand caught the attention from PepsiCo with their successful business growth. In the future, the U.S. sales of energy drinks could total about $16.9 billion by 2022, according to Market Research Hub.
