Social Media Storytelling: Twisting a Video Into Your Own Story

How can you incorporate social media into your marketing communications? Here’s a perfect example of how to do that. Juan Antonio Vargas Barraza, a PhD candidate in marketing communications at the University of Madrid and University of Guadalajara, showed me these two videos on YouTube from his home country of Mexico.

The first video shows a young teenager taunting his chubby friend while attempting to cross a stream, walking across a makeshift bridge. A third friend videotaped these two, documenting the fat kid’s unfortunate fate. The video became so popular that over 20 million people watched the video. You can watch it here:


Enter Gamesa, the cookie company owned by Pepsico. Their “Emperor” brand of cookies routinely uses this story line: bad guy taunts good guy and the emperor enters the scene to save the underdog. In one commercial, a man steals a woman’s parking place and the emperor helps her get her parking place back.

When Gamesa saw the video above, it was the perfect fit for their story line. Gamesa tracked down the kids featured in the made-at-home video and hired them to re-make it. But this time, the chubby kid doesn’t fall into the water. The Roman emperors enter the scene and throw his friend and the cameraman into the stream.

What other social media story telling have you seen like this one?