Trend: Haul Videos

Haul videos are the democratization of the home shopping network. They typically feature teen girls just back from the mall, shopping bag in hand, gushing over their purchases (or “haul”) to their webcam to be uploaded to YouTube for the world to see.

Haul videos are funny, a little weird, and they’re the latest thing.

The following chart shows the volume of searches for the singular and the plural versions of “Haul Video”:

While the volume of searches are increasing, the searches are originating from California, according to Google Insights for Search. That will likely change rapidly once retailers get wind of this trend.

I have ceased to be surprised by what people do online but thankfully, I have not ceased to be amused. However silly I think these Haul videos are, I still can recognize retailing gold when it punches me in the face.

A search for Haul at YouTube returns 105,000 videos. A spot check reveals that surprisingly few of these videos are for U-Haul or another unrelated topic.

What more could a retailer ask for that enthusiastic, peer-to-peer endorsements of their shopping experiences? Retailers should be cultivating if not deliberately encouraging the creation of these videos.

Some of these Haulcasters are developing quite a following and branding their own channels. Take Sushirockstar, who, through her 89 Haul videos, has garnered nearly a million video views, more than 200,000 channel views, and boasts nearly 15,000 subscribers.