Can Youtube Stars Ap-PEA-se Marketers?

As a social media platform, YouTube has grown massively over the past couple years. Along with it, people who post videos have become ‘YouTube celebrities,’ with millions of followers and views to each video they post. Because YouTube's become such a big platform, businesses have taken the opportunity to advertise their products. Companies can pay for adverts that appear before a video plays, but another way is through the YouTubers themselves.

Naturebox is a company that allows you to order healthy snacks online and have them delivered to your door, has used hugely successful YouTubers such as Tyler Oakley and Colleen Ballinger to promote their product in their videos. They talk about the brand in general, and offer a discount on purchases, and free shipping when a specific code word is used.

This is both an effective, and ineffective marketing strategy; these YouTube stars have a very large audience, so millions of people will see this promotions; Naturebox is clearly aiming for reach rather than frequency in their strategy. This is pretty successful, because a brand that might’ve been somewhat unknown by people not very interested in healthy eating is now known to millions of people across the world, in many different countries.

However, a lot of the audience of these celebrities are from the younger demographic, being under 18. A lot of them probably still live at home and therefore might not buy household food. Additionally, this brand, and home delivery service the YouTubers advertise are only available in the United States and Canada. So the majority of viewers that see these ads are unable to buy anything, and the cost of advertisements through the Youtubers might not really be that beneficial.