In recent years, the explosive growth of fandom culture has opened up new opportunities for marketing. Many brands have successfully leveraged the influence of fandoms to amplify their marketing campaigns and attract new consumers. So what trends will fandoms continue to develop in 2025, and how should brands exploit them? Let’s explore the development trends of fandom culture in the latest report from YouTube!
In 2024, there were many successful marketing campaigns by taking advantage of the fans. Typically in Vietnam, it can be mentioned that the campaign dared to try, dare to play with the strange sea of Celano Brand, combined with the second singer Hieu and the “brothers” from the drunken brother . In particular, Celano has cleverly exploited the culture of fans such as: Building the image of the total talent for idols, making a “wedding” of fans in the middle of the concert, … helping the campaign to cover all over the Social networking site last December.
According to Marketcast, brands using fandom marketing have a significantly higher level of spread, because fans tend to introduce products they love to others 8 times higher than the product. normally. In addition, the level of interaction with the content related to the fandom is also highly appreciated, the survey shows that 72% of Z gene users are very interactive with the fandom.
Therefore, the approach to fandom culture is both a golden opportunity for the brand to exploit more new loyal customers and help increase the coverage of the campaign thanks to the strength of the fandom. So recently YouTube has released a fandom culture report that helps brands can grasp and take advantage of this special trend in marketing campaigns!
80% of fans use Youtube to see the idol once a week
The most recent survey shows that 80 % of fans use Youtube to see the content of the people or things they admire at least once a week. In particular, fans not only see the content of idols but also actively talk and interact with others in the fandom about the content. They even created a lot of their own videos to show their admiration with idols and create relationships with other fans. From memes, fancams, Video reviews, videos Reaction, fan art, .. . The Creative content from fans became increasingly diverse and popular with fandom.
From fans to Super Fan: Each rank in the fandom owns different behaviors
Up to 85% of the survey participants shared that they themselves were fans of one person or something, something. However, the fans of each individual in the fandom are not the same, leading to completely different behavioral trends. The higher the fan level, the more fans prefer to watch and create more idol content.
Specifically, there are 4 most popular fans in a fandom:
- Casual fans account for 42%: they usually only consume content
- Big fan (Big Fan) accounts for 29%: they see the content and learn deeply about the idol, support the idol activities and often interact on social networks.
- Super Fan accounts for 21%: This group of people not only view content but also often create content and spend money on idol products and services.
Professional fans (Professional Fan) 8%: These are fans who are active, leaders of fandom groups, to perform events and professional activities for idols.
From the above density, Marketer can determine how to approach each fans and estimate their feedback level to the brand. For example, when you want to deploy a UGC (User Generated Content) activity on Social Media, the brand needs to focus on the Big Fan group, determining the mass of this group to predict the campaign effectively.
As for Professional Fan, they are not only fans but also content creators that brands should not miss. These fans understand how to build an online fandom and take advantage of technology and foundation for community development. They are also individuals with great influence on other fans in the fandom. Therefore, the brand should consider the forms of deeper cooperation with this group.
For example, Taylor Swift’s ERAS tour last year. Although everyone can enjoy the concert, but to truly understand and fully enjoy a three -hour concert, fans need to understand the entire list of Taylor’s previous songs along with The stories behind those songs.
Therefore, content creators like @allysheehan used their own channels to decipher the lyrics and stories of Taylor, analyze the cultural impact of the singer to the public, and even make videos Instructions for the bracelet of friendly friendship of Swifties.
The development of niche fandoms on YouTube
YouTube is not only the area of big and famous fan communities, but also has many small fandoms – where connecting people with the same niche hobbies. The survey showed that up to 47% of the Z gene said they belong to a fandom in which there was no acquaintance of their participating, it was a very unique niche, their own color. This is also very suitable for the unique personality and colorful of the Z gene.
Above all, these niche fandoms affect fans even deeper than the big fandoms. For example, channel @11foot8Plus8 only focused on a bridge in North Carolina and recorded the journey of 183 trucks (as of May 2024) trapped under that low bridge. Although this small community has only about 300k registered, they are people who do not live near the bridge, even never met, but in the comment section of this channel can see them very exciting, Even cohesive as a family of interest.
Therefore, when exploiting the brand culture, the brand should not ignore the influence of these “small but martial” fandoms.
Creative content from fans themselves is increasingly popular
66% of Z gene agrees that they often spend more time seeing the content of analysis or discussing something more than that. That is why video Reaction a music video, a movie of idol, … on YouTube is getting millions of views.
For example, when Rockstar Games released a trailer for the famous game Grand Theft Auto Vi, fans immediately rushed to watch and helped this trailer to reach 93 million views within 24 hours. However, the surprising thing is that fans have created a series of response, analysis, and dissection videos. And those fan-made videos attracted 192 million views in the same time, no less than the charm of the trailer.
In general, the content created by fans is becoming more and more creative and diverse. These content plays a very important role in shaping and developing the cultural development of a fandom and has a profound influence on members of that fandom. Therefore, when implementing the Influencer strategies, Fandom culture, the brand expands cooperation with the fans of that fandom.
The resonance power between fandom and brand is increasing
As the fandom culture became more and more popular, its influence on consumers’ behaviors gradually increased. A survey showed that 74% of the Z gene fans (14-24 years old, online) liked to see the brand participating in fandom activities, immersed in the cultures and idols they love.
Typical examples as McDonald’s exploit anime fandom – one of the largest fans in the world. McDonald’s launched a campaign called “WcDonalds” – recreating the image of McDonald’s in the anime. The brand even creates its own version of an AMV (anime music video) – a music video created by fans, combined with anime clips.
In general, to really take advantage of the strength from the fandom, creators and brands need to become more sensitive. Not only stop at normal activities such as Advertising images of idols, or interactive minigames, … the brand can consider cooperation with fans to create content, exploit Fandom culture.
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