The Internet

Phenomenon of the
Harlem Shake
Business Research Methods
By Utkarsh Rastogi (PGP/16/056)

2/28/2013

The Internet Phenomenon of the Harlem Shake

Business Research Methods

Table of Contents
ABSTRACT .................................................................................................................................... 2
INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................................... 3
HOW THE VIDEO WENT VIRAL AND THE BOT GRAPH ..................................................... 3
STAKEHOLDER ANALYSIS ....................................................................................................... 5
SPECIFIC STAKEHOLDER ANALYSIS .................................................................................... 5
SPECIFIC STAKES OF THE STAKEHOLDERS ........................................................................ 6
LITERATURE REVIEW ............................................................................................................... 7
RESEARCH OBJECTIVE ............................................................................................................. 9
RESEARCH QUESTIONS ............................................................................................................ 9
PROPOSED RESEARCH METHODOLOGY ............................................................................ 10
CAUSAL LOOP STUDY ............................................................................................................. 11
FINDINGS AND CONCLUSION FROM THE STUDY ............................................................ 12

The Internet Phenomenon of the Harlem Shake

Business Research Methods

ABSTRACT
The paper introduces the reader to Harlem Shake which is a video that went viral in early
February, 2013. Over the month different versions were uploaded about a total of 100,000 times
with views totaling about 400 million. The paper then attempts to explain the various reasons
which went into making the video such an internet phenomenon and what makes it different
from the Gangnam Style video which currently holds the record for the most number of views
for any video on Youtube at 1 billion plus number of views. Viral videos are the new methods
being employed by corporates for positioning their products and hence the paper then attempts to
analyse the business opportunities associated with viral videos and Harlem Style in particular.
The paper then ends with the legacy and impact that this video has had on popular culture and
the changes online media and globalization is bringing to our lives.

The Internet Phenomenon of the Harlem Shake

Business Research Methods

INTRODUCTION
The Harlem Shake is a viral video or an Internet meme which was for the first time uploaded on
popular video sharing website Youtube for the first time on 2nd February, 2013 by a user named
The Sunny Coast Skate. Since then, there have been about 100,000 versions of the same
uploaded with the total number of views being about 400 million.
The videos last between 30 and 32 seconds and feature an excerpt from the song "Harlem Shake"
by electronic musician Baauer. Usually, a video begins with one person (often helmeted or
masked) dancing to the song alone for 15 seconds, surrounded by other people not paying
attention or unaware of the dancing individual. When the bass drops, the video cuts to the entire
crowd doing a crazy convulsive dance for the next 15 seconds. The dancing style should not be
confused with the original Harlem Shake dance. Additionally, in the second half of the video,
people often wear a minimum of clothes or crazy outfits or costumes while wielding strange
props.1

HOW THE VIDEO WENT VIRAL AND THE BOT GRAPH2

Let us look at the timeline of the events leading up to the boom:
February 2, 2013: The Sunny Coast Skate uploads their version of the Harlem Shake at 1:17am,
which is the version that sparked the viral video mayhem. Later that morning, Youtube user
DizastaMusic (or Filthy Frank) uploaded a shortened version of his Harlem Shake video at
11:38am. A second version of The Sunny Coast Skates Harlem Shake was released in the
afternoon and gave credit to The Sunny Coast Skate for their original version. In the following

1
2

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harlem_Shake_(meme)
Lifecycle of a Viral Video: The Harlem Shake Down- Jordan Adams; Cision Blog

The Internet Phenomenon of the Harlem Shake

Business Research Methods

days, the videos stay relatively flat with a few likes here and there but dont gain any
momentum.
February 6, 2013: A handful of Twitter users with over 1.5 million followers (collectively) start
tweeting about the Harlem Shake videos. This is the first sign of Internet users starting to make
their way toward the first generation Harlem Shake videos.
February 7, 2013: Electronic artist Diplo re-tweets a version of the Harlem Shake to his
800,000+ Twitter followers, which was just above College Humors tweet highlighting the
videos and their own version, followed by a number of tweets and retweets of the Harlem Shake
videos. At this point, views of the Harlem Shake start growing exponentially. The viral video is
born.
The BOT graph of the number of tweets about the Harlem Shake video is shown below:

Figure 1 - The BOT graph of the number of tweets per day about the Harlem Shake

As can be seen in the BOT graph the exponential growth started from around 9th February and
reached its peak on around 17th February, 2013.

The Internet Phenomenon of the Harlem Shake

Business Research Methods

STAKEHOLDER ANALYSIS
Given below is the stakeholder map for viral videos:

Music
Video
Sharing
Websites

Search
Engines

Viral
Video
Video
Uploaders

Viewers

Advertisers

SPECIFIC STAKEHOLDER ANALYSIS

Given below are the specific stakeholders for Viral Videos such as the Harlem Shake

Music
Search Engines
Video Uploaders

Video Sharing
Websites
Advertisers
Viewers

Musicians like Baauer for Harlem Shake

Google
Yahoo
Companies who wish to market their products
Common users of the video sharing websites
Youtube
Metacafe etc.
Corporations who wish to advertise on the Videos

Common users of the video sharing websites

The Internet Phenomenon of the Harlem Shake

Business Research Methods

SPECIFIC STAKES OF THE STAKEHOLDERS3

Given below are the specific stakes of the stakeholders

Music

Musicians earn royalty on the music pieces used in the viral videos
Due to the increase in their popular appeal they get to perform at concerts
etc, further increasing their earnings

Search Engines like Google own Youtube and hence make a huge profit
Increased number of hits on the website due to more viewers searching for
Search Engines videos like Harlem Shake

Video
Uploaders

Firms must make innovative videos to attract the attention of the various
viewers surfing the site
For common users it is a shot at instant fame

Websites like Youtube get to make huge revenues due to viral videos
High competition between sites like Youtube, Metacafe, Dailymotion etc to
Video Sharing get the most videos which have a potential of going viral
Websites

Advertisers

Placing an advertisement in a viral video will get companies a lot of publicity

for their products
More effective than any other form of advertising

Viewers

Video Sharing Websites have become a very important form of

entertainment for a majority of the internet users
The concept should not get boring and repetitive, otherwise the concept will
die down

How Your Harlem Shake Videos Make Money for the Original Artist Victor Luckerson; Time Business, 21
February 2013

st

The Internet Phenomenon of the Harlem Shake

Business Research Methods

LITERATURE REVIEW

Visual Memes in Social Media Xie, Natsev, Kender, Hill, Smith; MM11,
November 28December 1, 2011, Scottsdale, Arizona, USA: This paper propose visual
memes, or frequently reposted short video segments, for tracking large-scale video remix
in social media. Visual memes are extracted by novel and highly scalable detection
algorithms that we develop, with over 96% precision and 80% recall.

Catching a Viral Video Broxton, Interian, Vaver, Wattenhofer; Data Mining

Workshops (ICDMW), 2010 IEEE International Conference: The sharing and resharing of videos on social sites, blogs e-mail, and other means has given rise to the
phenomenon of viral videos - videos that become popular through internet sharing. This
paper seeks to better understand viral videos on You Tube by analyzing sharing and its
relationship to video popularity using 1.5 million You Tube videos.

Spreading The Virus: Emotional Tone Of Viral Advertising And Its Effect On
Forwarding Intentions And Attitudes Eckler, Bolls Journal of Interactive
Advertising, Vol 11 No 2 (Spring 2011), pp. 111: Viral advertising has attracted
advertisers in recent years, yet little is known about how exactly it works from an
information processing perspective. This study extends knowledge by exploring how the
emotional tone (pleasant, unpleasant, coactive) of viral video ads affects attitude toward
the ad, attitude toward the brand, and forwarding intentions.

Word of mouth and viral marketing: taking the temperature of the hottest trends in
marketing Ferguson; Journal of Consumer Marketing, Vol. 25 Iss: 3, pp.179
182: This paper studies examples of emerging marketing trends like word-of-mouth and
viral marketing, and attempt to determine their measurability in terms of return on
investment (ROI)
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The Internet Phenomenon of the Harlem Shake

Business Research Methods

Knowledge-sharing and influence in online social networks via viral marketing

Subramani, Rajagopalan; Communications of the ACM, Volume 46 Issue 12,
December 2003: This paper highlights two factors that play a key role in determining the
nature of influence episodes in viral marketing. The first is the role of the influencer. The
second is the level of network externalities.

The dynamics of Viral Marketing Leskovec, Adamic, Huberman; Journal ACM

Transactions on the Web (TWEB), Volume 1 Issue 1, May 2007: The paper presents
an analysis of a person-to-person recommendation network, consisting of 4 million
people who made 16 million recommendations on half a million products. It observes the
propagation of recommendations and the cascade sizes, which is explained by a simple
stochastic model.

Can You Measure the ROI of Your Social Media Marketing? Hoffman, Fodor;
MIT Sloan Management Review, Fall 2010, Vol 52 No. 1: The paper discusses that
effective social media measurement should start by turning the traditional ROI approach
on its head. That is, instead of emphasizing their own marketing investments and
calculating the returns in terms of customer response, managers should begin by
considering consumer motivations to use social media and then measure the social media
investments customers make as they engage with the marketers brands.

Evaluating viral marketing: isolating the key criteria Cruz, Fill (2008); Marketing
Intelligence & Planning, Vol. 26 Iss: 7, pp.743 758: There has been little evidence of
any work undertaken to measure the effectiveness of viral marketing campaigns. This
paper aims to report on research undertaken to determine the key criteria that viral

The Internet Phenomenon of the Harlem Shake

Business Research Methods

marketing practitioners believe should be used to measure the success of viral marketing
campaigns.

Yes We Can: How Online Viewership, Blog Discussion, Campaign Statements,

and Mainstream Media Coverage Produced a Viral Video Phenomenon Wallsten;
Journal of Information Technology & Politics, Volume 7, Issue 2-3, 2010, pp. 163
181: This article provides an initial assessment of the complex relationships that drive
viral political videos by examining the interplay between audience size, blog discussion,
campaign statements, and mainstream media coverage of the most popular online
political video of the 2008 campaignwill.i.am's Yes We Can music video.

Social media and its implication for Viral Marketing Miller, Lammas; Asia Pacific
Public Relations Journal, Vol 11: Social media presents potentially seductive
opportunities for new forms of communication and commerce between marketers and
consumers. As advertisers typically want to find some way to follow their target
audiences, many new media opportunities are presented to advertisers.

RESEARCH OBJECTIVE
To analyse the reasons for the explosion of Harlem Shake on the internet and find out
ways in which viral videos can be used effectively for marketing

RESEARCH QUESTIONS
1) What factors are responsible for making a video go viral?
2) How are the various stakeholders affected by a viral video?
3) How is Harlem Shake comparable to other viral videos e.g. Gangnam Style?
4) Do the advertisers specifically choose viral videos to place their advertisements?
5) How are Video Sharing Websites benefitting from viral videos?
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The Internet Phenomenon of the Harlem Shake

Business Research Methods

PROPOSED RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

Literature Review

Identification of factors
for viral video boom

Secondary data
collection

Data remodelling for

applying theories

Analysis of the results

Conclusions and
inferences

10

The Internet Phenomenon of the Harlem Shake

Business Research Methods

CAUSAL LOOP STUDY

The Reinforcing Cycle

People watch
Harlem Shake

Another version is
uploaded

They like it
because it is new

They make a video

of their own

They want to
emulate since it is
easy to do so

The Balancing Cycle

People watch
Harlem Shake

Harlem Shake is
replaced by a new
video

Lack of interest amongst

viewers causes decline in
number of views

They are bored of it

becuase it has been
up for many days

They move on to
some other new
fad
11

The Internet Phenomenon of the Harlem Shake

Business Research Methods

FINDINGS AND CONCLUSION FROM THE STUDY

The success of the videos was in part attributed to the anticipation of the breakout moment and
short length, making them very accessible to watch. The Harlem Shake is technically very easy
for fans to reproduce, as it consists of a single locked camera shot and one jump cut.
Nonetheless, the simplicity of the concept allows fans considerable scope in creating their own
distinctive variant and making their mark, while retaining the basic elements. In its simplest
form, it could be made with two people; a more sophisticated version might even involve a
crowded stadium. The explosion has much to do with the concept. The clips are goofy, simple
and easily adapted by the next set of stars. The other dynamic is that fans are learning to do more
than just forward videos on to friends. Not just regular internet users but even companies dont
want to be left behind in this viral video rush. For example, within a week of the trend taking off,
Pepsi had uploaded two Harlem Shake videos. Brands including Puma, Nintendo and Dr Pepper
contributed versions of their own.4 Moreover, there is a level playing field for celebrities and
fans alike, with no guarantee of success for either group. There is a strong vein of humour
running through each video that is not dependent on language, further increasing its potential to
spread virally.
The success of Harlem Shake also highlights a change of direction for music rights holders. With
the exception of a takedown notice issued when established artist Azealia Banks tried to upload
her own version of the track, Baauer and his label, Mad Decent records, instead made use of
YouTube's Content ID database to assert copyright over the fan-made videos and claim a
proportion of advertising revenue in respect of each one. Neither YouTube nor Mad Decent
4

st

Why the Harlem Shake Matters John Jurgensen; The Wall Street Journal, 21 February 2013

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The Internet Phenomenon of the Harlem Shake

Business Research Methods

would confirm how much money has been generated from clicks on Harlem Shake videos, but it
is expected be a considerable amount. Past viral hits on YouTube have generated big revenues
for content owners. Gangnam Style, the viral sensation of 2012, earned Korean pop star Psy
and his handlers a reported $870,000 from YouTube ad revenue alone. The amateur YouTube
classic Charlie Bit My Finger video netted Charlies parents more than $150,000.5
There have been some major cultural changes that have accompanied the rage of The Harlem
Shake. On Wednesday, the trade publication Billboard announced it is now incorporating U.S.
YouTube streams into its chart rankings. That means views of an artist's music videoas well as
user-generated clips that use the official songare being tallied along with radio airplay, paid
downloads and other factors that make up Billboard's singles charts. The new methodology
catapulted Baauer's "Harlem Shake" song to No. 1 on the Hot 100.6
It remains to be seen know as to how long can the meme remain in the public consciousness.

st

How Your Harlem Shake Videos Make Money for the Original Artist Victor Luckerson; Time Business, 21
February 2013
6
Harlem Shake & Billboard: Baauer Song Tops Revamped Hot 100 Chart Kia Makarechi; The Huffington Post,
st
21 February 2013

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