📘 A guy, a guitar, a baby, and a wholesome viral sensation
The story behind Dan Fowlks' "Dream Lover" viral video
In January 2018, some random guy tagged The Dad on a video he posted on Facebook.
Because I was obsessed with checking likes, comments, messages, EVERYTHING, I saw the tag. A few months later, HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF PEOPLE HAD SEEN THE VIDEO. That’s the power of social media.
Even back then we got messages DAILY with things people wanted us to post. 99% were absolutely un-postable…
(Literally just this morning I got this message request on my personal Facebook:
If you’re reading this, you want my permission to post it WHERE? On The Dad? Um, sure, I don’t work there anymore. Post all the Dream Chopper Giveaways you want.)
…but I was 10 seconds into this video and I knew it was perfect for us. It was a guy playing the guitar and singing to his baby daughter, who was so enthralled and loving it. Very on brand for us. A cool young dad (just like me LOLOL) rockin out with his kid… being involved, enjoying fatherhood.
So I chatted with the guy, Dan Fowlks, lightly edited the video, got his permission, and scheduled it for The Dad.
The Original Post
I’ve never seen a post blow up like this one. It got likes, shares, and views instantly and then kept growing at a growing rate. The definition of a viral post.
Dan got a ton of well deserved attention for it and several opportunities, and The Dad pages gained a bunch of followers from it. If we were gonna pick what type of content we’d gain followers from across the mosaic of all the tones we did, this wholesome vid was a great one to stand out.
But wait, is all audience growth good?
I’ve never publicly talked about this.
Shortly after it started to take off, we noticed a trend when analyzing the data. The video was overperforming internationally. We were a small-ish page at the time. The audience growth we were seeing was significant. Our page demographics were shifting.
Recall that The Dad is a digital media brand that primarily makes money from branded content from advertisers wanting to reach US dads. In other words, we’re trying to run a business here! 🤑🤑🤑 So while our creative team and I were focused on content first, content first, content first, leadership had BUSINESS OBJECTIVES in mind.
So audience demographics (or demo as they’d say in the industry to SAVE TIME), was super important. Our business leadership did NOT want us to have a majority international audience.
And so…. I was told to go in and restrict the visibility of this video to North America. 😭
It broke my heart to do it. With everything we were trying to do to build an audience, felt weird at the time. Feels weird now. But I get it.
If we didn’t throttle our own reach, maybe The Dad would be the #1 dad brand in Japan right now. (JK… kinda.)
2019 WEBBY VIRAL VIDEO OF THE YEAR NOMINEE
In 2019, Dan’s video was right alongside Will Smith’s jump video (which was discussed at the start and finish of his recent memoir) as a Webby Viral Video of the Year nominee:
Since Dan’s video is so beautifully wholesome, I’m not even gonna force a Will Smith “slap” joke here. but if I did, it would be something about how it’s better to be slappin the bass instead of slappin the face.
But I’m not gonna do that. I’m just not.
Nice guys finish… with cool memories for their family to enjoy
Dan is a great guy. Super cool of him to reach out to us with the video and let us run with it. I hope he is proud of all the attention he has received from it.
Ben Stumpf and the video crew actually flew out to Utah to do a feature on him for our Father Figures series.
What type of an impact does a mega-viral video like this have on a person and his family? It is quite positive if handled correctly. Check out the feature. It’s lovely.
Dan and his family will have this to look back on… forever. That’s what it’s all about.
Dan is a dad, actor, writer, and yes, musician. You can find him on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, IMDB, and more.