can the honey badger guy inspire us to love nature?
By: David Connell
Tags: Humor, Nonprofit, Honey Badger, Environment Films, Environment

What’s got my thinking about the honey badger, the Jesus Lizard, the American Bull Frog and the Nasty Disgusting World of Vampire Bats is Randall’s World of WIld Wild Animals.

Admittedly I’m a little late to this party. The honey badger video was posted in January of this year and has racked up 12 million views. Randall’s latest animal video was posted in June and has garnered close to 100,000 views, down from the over 200,000 (and in some cases 300,000 to 600,0000) views his preview videos received, so this meme may have run its course. Still, Randall’s Wild Wild World of Animals is a monster YouTube hit.

With it’s off-color, femme-voiced narration and pirated animal videos, Randall’s Wild Wild World of Animals is both hilarious and nostalgic. The clips bring viewers back to a childhood of watching nature documentaries while at the same time reminding them of the crazy friend of a friend they met last weekend (or last month, or that time before they had kids and used to go out to bars — remember how crazy he was!?!).

What’s most surprising about the shows is that they actually have a lot of interesting information about the animals they profile and you get the sense that Randall is really fascinated by these creatures and cares about them. Without this secret sauce, I don’t think the videos would be as popular as they are.

The question I’ve been mulling, and haven’t really come up with an answer to yet, is how can an organization like mine (The Nature Conservancy) — an organization trying to get GenX and GenY to care about environmental conservation — capture some of the magic that Randall’s Wild Wild World of Animals has tapped into. To be clear, that magic is a potent combination of humor, familiarity and honest concern.

Certainly the easiest (and most assuredly least successful) thing to do would be to simply ape the shows and create a knock off. That’s a bad idea.

The second easiest thing to do would be to hire Randall to do a series of spots with a deeper environmental/conservation message, fewer swear words and some light branding. That’s a better idea and would probably get tens of thousands of views if marketed properly — I don’t think it would become as popular as his home-grown videos however because branded doesn’t work as well as user-generated on YouTube. As evidence just look at the hit counts Randall’s Wild WIld World of Animals is getting compared to National Geographic’s YouTube presence.

The most difficult and most successful long-term play would be to study Randall’s secret sauce, learn from it and infuse it into some targeted marketing campaigns. To do this, we need to be brave. We need to not be afraid of the inevitable (and I would guess, swift) backlash from old-gaurd donors and supporters. This means really not being afraid to fail. it also means taking on an underground marketing campaign that you run on Tumblr, YouTube, Twitter (probably not Facebook) and other spots where your target audience hangs out, but the old-gaurd ignores. If it’s successful, maybe it means approaching someone like the Cheezburger Network about a long-term content partnership.

Environmental groups need to do more of this kind of messaging if they want to reach younger audiences. They need to not take themselves so seriously and they need to not be afraid to offend. Otherwise they’re just going to be left behind and ultimately Randall’s Wild Wild World of Animals will have fewer subjects like this awesome guy: