Tastes Good

Are you familiar with Danny Duncan? The YouTube star who, according to a 2023 Forbes profile, “has racked up over 7 million subscribers and 1.6 billion views”?

Maybe. Maybe not.

After all, this is what modern celebrity is like. Someone can be a mega-star with an annual income that dwarfs the GDPs of several small countries, and huge swaths of the population might never have heard of them. And even those who are hardcore fans might not realize the extent of their reach.

Again, according to Forbes: “few know just how many businesses he’s started, lives he’s changed, and the millions of products he’s sold in the process.”

One of those businesses? Matador Energy.

And we don’t mean he shills for their products on his videos. No. It’s his business. On LinkedIn, Christopher Pruneda lays it out pretty clearly. In terms of what it’s like to work with Danny Duncan, the Matador CEO and co-founder says:

First, I work FOR Danny Duncan, not WITH. Danny is the majority owner and creator of MATADOR ENERGY.

And this, Pruneda posits, should not be a surprise:

Media has changed. I have several high def TVs throughout my house. Not only do my kids not watch those TV’s, they don’t know how to turn them on. They consume media on their iphones and ipads, and the channels they watch are creators like Danny Duncan. Soon, few brands will launch successfully without a creator/online media partnership. It is the now and the future.

An overstatement, but probably not by much.

Another thing Pruneda clarifies:

Second, apart from his personality on YouTube, which can be characterized as a blend of ‘Rob Dyrdek and Jackass’, Danny is a serious businessman.

And here we have to agree too. Not because we’ve ever worked with Danny Duncan, but because of what we see in Matador’s marketing. Or, actually, what we don’t see. Which is: Danny Duncan.

Over on Amazon, Duncan can be seen in the background of an image, but his name appears nowhere, not even in any of the 67 reviews (which is 2 reviews away from a number Duncan would likely find very funny). Instead, most seem to be about how, for an energy shot, it actually tastes pretty good.

Same on Matador’s own site. He’s not entirely absent, but we see very little of him.

We don’t mean calling this a savvy business decision to be a slight against the content creator. We’re being sincere. It shows a shrewder sense than most of the two audiences out there for any influencer-driven property: those who know and care, and those who don’t (or do know but actively dislike).

You put some polarizing dude from the internet on all the marketing for your hard seltzer, and some people are going to be excited, but others might say, “Eh, no thanks, not for me,” because of that dude.

Meanwhile, with this stuff, those who actively want to buy energy shots from a guy who also peddles shirts that say “Virginity Rocks” or show a camper trailer with the caption “I hate pulling out” can… when he promotes it on his YouTube channel. Those, on the other hand, who might be turned off by such things, don’t have to think about it. They can just enjoy their energy shots that, again, are apparently pretty tasty.

In conclusion: it’s 2025 and doing business is weird. But the energy shots are apparently good and plenty caffeinated.