7 seats left:

Join us Dec. 1-3 in New Orleans for the Digiday Programmatic Marketing Summit

SECURE YOUR SEAT

Brands have discovered the ‘Damn Daniel’ meme

It’s hard to keep up, but there’s a new teenager the Internet is obsessing over.

His name is Daniel Lara, a high school student from California, who’s the center of the latest viral video called “Damn Daniel.”

Admittedly, it’s easier to watch than explain, but turn the volume down.

Here it is:

The clip, which are several Snapchat videos stitched together, was tweeted by his friend Joshua Holz, who playfully harasses his friend with the phrase as a way to troll his friends’ outfit and white Vans. “Damn, Daniel,” Josh screams. “Back at it again with the white Vans!” 

Since being uploaded on Feb. 15, the original tweet has racked up 263,000 retweets and 330,000 likes.

Not surprisingly, now brands are glomming on to Daniel and his Vans because the Internet won’t let us have nice things. Axe, Zappos, Clorox and even a British football team have all deployed the phrase:

Vans also took notice and posted an inexplicable poll that’s garnered 145,000 votes:

The company hasn’t yet returned a request for comment.

More in Marketing

TikTok dangles cash, credits and fully-funded deals to supercharge U.S. Shop spending

The platform has shared a plethora of incentives, to motivate sellers to spend more money.

Agencies are racing to offer zero-click analysis tools, but monetizing them isn’t easy

Marketing services companies are rushing to answer clients’ zero-click queries. The jury’s out on whether clients will pay for those answers, however.

Influencer partnerships expand, though unevenly across the creator economy 

The result is a creator economy caught between maturity and hesitation — growing up fast but not all at once.