Every time we at Custom Communication do social media strategic reviews for clients we can’t help but note the growing influence of YouTube on a company’s reputation.

So, ahead of our Social Media Influence conference we decided to compile our own YouTube Corporate Top
10 list. We’ve chosen 10 of the biggest global brands with the help of Business Week’s annual top 100 brand guide. All of the following videos appear within the first 10
results in a search of the company name, each one has been viewed over
1 million times and each has generated hundreds of comments.

Here then, in reverse order, is part one of Custom Communication’s YouTube
Corporate Top 10.

While you’re watching, ask yourself this question -
Do you know how your company looks on YouTube?

10, TOYOTA (65,700 videos in total)

"Top Gear: Killing a Toyota Part 1"  – Viewed 1,132,279 times (1562 comments)

Car brands do particularly well on YouTube especially if a, they go
really fast b, they are involved in spectacular crashes c, they are
incredibly expensive d, all of the above. That said this Toyota clip is
a roaring success for none of these reasons: instead it benefits from
being the star of one of Top Gear’s most famous stunts in which our
heroes try unsuccessfully to destroy a Toyota pick up truck (including
the now infamous moment where Jeremy Clarkson rams the truck into a
tree).

Impact on Reputation - +9  (Toyota’s tough guy reputation reinforced and Top Gear cred to boot)

9, IKEA (7,120 videos in total)

"Banned Commercial – Swedish Midsummer"  – Viewed 1,483,858 times. 2,727 comments

The home furnishing powerhouse has a reputation for quirky informality
but it probably didn’t bank on it’s German colleagues taking the piss
out of a traditional Swedish Midsummer festival in a TV ad. It was
quickly pulled from TV but lives on online in a strangely long format for an ad.

Impact on Reputation: 0 (Have you ever eaten at an Ikea restaurant?)

8, MICROSOFT (101,000 videos in total)

"Microsoft Surface Parody" – Viewed 2,068,861 times. 3,322 comments



Popular Mechanics calls Microsoft’s Surface
"the coffee table that will change the world" – a futuristic vision of
home computing that does away with keyboard and mouse. It has the
techies buzzing with both praise and a bit of ridicule. This video
morphs both sentiments into a funny product preview of the Surface. As
the narrator intones: "In the future getting tanked with your
friends is going to be a whole lot more fun because you’ll be sitting
at a table that makes something cool happen every time they bring a
drink….which you’ll want to do over and over".

Impact on Reputation: +5 (Imitation = flattery even when takes pot shots
at Redmond’s design prowess. Could have been far worse – check out the
next most viewed offering, "Microsoft designs the iPod".)

7, BUDWEISER (7,460 videos in total)

"Banned Super Bowl 2007 Bud commercial" – Viewed 2,149,516 times, 618 comments

What happens when you’ve spent millions on a slightly racy Superbowl ad
and then the censor killjoys decide to ban it? The ad finds its way
onto YouTube of course and gains cult status along with a whole new
audience.

Impact on Reputation: +7 (This is manna from heaven for YouTube fans.)

6, DISNEY (439,000 videos in total)

"Internet is for Porn" – Viewed 3,278,230 times, 3,159 comments

Admittedly the number one viewed Disney-themed video actually is a clip of "A
Whole New World" from "Aladdin" but not far behind is this
not-so-family friendly mashup of Disney clips and a wonderfully rude Avenue Q song.

Impact on Reputation: – 8 (Perhaps not as embarrassing as having the
15-year old star of your top-selling pre-teen franchise pose semi-clad
for Vanity Fair but surely not what Uncle Walt had in mind when he
said: "Movies
can and do have tremendous influence in shaping young lives in the
realm of entertainment towards the ideals and objectives of normal
adulthood.")

Part II to follow.