'Damn Daniel' Viral Video Could Make Vans The Sneakers Of 2016

The latest data from Ticker Tags provides some surprising insight into the impact that one of the most popular viral Internet videos of 2016 may have on Wall Street. Ticker Tags monitors social media sites to identify trends by searching for words or phrases that appear together in social media content, such as tweets.
 

On February 15, Riverside High School student Josh Holz posted a 30-second video on Twitter with the caption “Damn Daniel” that took the Internet by storm. The video was a compilation of some of the outfits his friend Daniel Lara wore to school. In the video, Josh repeatedly says the phrase, “Damn, Daniel. Back at it again with the white Vans.”

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Not surprisingly, as the video went viral, social media mentions of VF Corp VFC’s Vans skyrocketed. The graph below shows that the “Damn Daniel” spike in Twitter Vans mentions nearly doubles the highest peak in mentions of Adidas AG ADDY, the other trendy sneaker of 2016.



Within 24 hours of the video going viral, Twitter users were already reporting that local stores were sold out of white Vans. VF Corp’s stock is up 9.0 percent since Feb. 15, but it’s hard to predict how large of an impact that the video will have on the company’s overall Q1 sales.

Disclosure: the author holds no position in the stocks mentioned.