5 Reasons Parrots are Better Marketers than You

I’ve been watching bird videos on YouTube recently, which I mostly do in the evenings on the weekends to relax.

One thing I’ve noticed is that some of these birds have much larger audiences than most people.

And a business blogger, I thought it would be fun to do an analysis and see what lessons we can learn from our fine feathered friends.

Although the bird owners that are publishing these videos are not marketing experts, some of them have built enviably large audiences of thousands of followers.

We can learn a few lessons from their success. Here are a few marketing insights that we can learn from popular birds.

1. Be Consistent

To my knowledge, the most popular cockatoo on YouTube by a landslide is Max with over 24,000 subscribers. Other popular cockatoos include Gotcha, Pebble, Baby and Harley.

One important thing to note about Max is that he has more than twice as many subscribers as his nearest competitors and over 13 million total video views.

Here are the subscriber and view counts for the top cockatoos on YouTube (from last week):

So why is Max so popular? What the secret to his success?

All the cockatoos I mentioned above have different personalities and are entertaining to watch.

But the simple secret to Max’s success is that his owner has posted his videos very consistently while everyone else posts with less frequency.

Some of Max’s videos have gone fairly viral and rank for the word “cockatoo” on YouTube search. “Cockatoo finding out he is going to the vet” has over 6 million views, for instance and features Max having a fit before going to see the vet:

Keyword research clearly helps for video rankings, but not all of his videos contain the word cockatoo. Although that one video accounts for nearly half of the total channel views, there are thousands of people that watch even his day to day videos regularly. And those views add up over time.

For all the cockatoo lovers out there, having a new video to watch every few days gives them something to look forward to.

Max, Harley and Gotcha have been posting a good amount of videos over the past week. Their subscriber counts have also increased the most with Max and Harley gaining more than 1,000 new subscribers in only about a week or two. Here’s a quick look at their numbers:

2. Tie into popular brands

One way popular YouTubers increase their reach is to tie into popular brands.

African grey parrots are known for their ability to talk and imitate human speech. This parrot learned the lyrics to the popular heavy metal song “Let the Bodies Hit the Floor” by Drowning Pool and was caught on camera singing:

“Bodies” by Drowning Pool was released in 2001 and is one of their most popular songs. It has been used frequently in advertising, TV shows and many YouTube videos.

The parrot has racked up over 9 million video views to date. Not bad considering the actual music video by Drowning Pool has around 40 million views.

3. Show some personality

Gotcha is a favorite among cockatoo lovers. He displays a lot of personality and his actions can range from being loud and crazy to quiet and affectionate.

Here are a few examples.

Gotcha the Cockatoo running on the floor yelling nonsense at everything:

Gotcha the Cockatoo dancing to Wild Thang:

Gotcha getting petted:

Many years ago, I read a book called “Messages” by Matthew McKay, Martha Davis and Patrick Fanning, a book about how to become a more effective communicator. Two of the three basic skills they covered were self disclosure and expressing.

Cockatoos have the intelligence of a 2-3 year old child and like a toddler, they express themselves openly and willingly.

Being able to express yourself  increases self-knowledge, improves communication and builds relationships with your audience.

Content in the business and marketing niche is known for being data driven and logical. But here are a couple of examples of marketers that use personality and self-disclosure to build a better bond with their audience.

On Sept 2014, Rand Fishkin shared a personal story how he struggled with depression and the personal challenges of being the CEO of Moz. This post received a lot of comments and support from the digital marketing community and over 100 comments.

https://moz.com/rand/long-ugly-year-depression-thats-finally-fading

Stephanie St Claire is a life and guidance consultant and wrote “11 Things I Wish I Knew When I Started My Business” which got shared thousands of times on Facebook. This post is written in a personal voice and also shares some valuable insights on what it’s like to run a business:

http://blissbombed.com/11-things-i-wish-i-knew-when-i-started-my-business/

Many marketers are afraid to show personality or express themselves to their audience. But research has shown that self disclosure is a great way to bond with other people.

4. Use Humor

Humor breeds likability and just about everyone has had a friend at some point in their lives that were really good at making them laugh.

And we loved hanging out with that friend!

Humor builds rapport and is makes you memorable.

Pebble the crazy cockatoo has gathered quite a following due to her humorous behavior. The following video shows Pebble showing off her crazy personality and entertaining her owners:

Humor is a powerful tool that is heavily underutilized in marketing. It’s a great way to stand out and possibly even go viral.

If you want some examples of the successful use of humor in marketing, check out how these brands used humor to amp up their marketing:

http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/7-boring-big-brands-that-used-humor-to-amp-up-their-marketing

5. Play off of past successes

One tactic that is used in business and marketing is to play off of past successes. It’s a simple tactic that can work really well and produce great results.

The video that made Max the cockatoo a popular YouTube star is the video of him having a fit before going to the vet.

This event was actually split into three videos. The first video has close to 7 million views, but the other two both have over 100,000 views and also did well.

Max’s owner uploaded a couple of new videos of his 2015 visit to the vet. The average Max video gets anywhere from 2,000 to 10,000 views, but these vet videos got over 35,000 views.

When I was studying LinkedIn Pulse articles in 2014, Chris Chan published a popular article called “Why I Quit Facebook and we are sharing much more than we think” that got over 600,000 views.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140709173931-11228988-why-i-quit-facebook-and-we-are-sharing-much-more-than-you-think

He followed up a few days later with another similar article entitled “An Open Letter to Mark Zuckerberg” that got over 509,000 views:

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140716103758-11228988-an-open-letter-to-mark-zuckerberg

Sometimes playing off of past successes can be an easy way for marketers to continue their winning streak.

To Sum It Up

A lot of credit also goes to the bird owners from sharing their videos and even showcasing their own personalities when interacting with the birds.

By the way, although they can be cute, cockatoos and parrots are noisy, destructive and can live up to 60-80 years. They are a lot of work and require a patient and dedicated owner.

So what do you think? Did you learn something useful about marketing… from parrots and cockatoos?