Tag Archive for 'Viral Video'Page 2 of 2

Samsung’s successful embrace of viral video

Published

on April 30, 2009

Once again Samsung have engaged the clever folks at The Viral Factory to develop a viral video to promote one of their latest products. Last time they went to Wales to video LED wrapped sheep (7.5 million views and counting) to promote Samsung’s line of ultrathin LED TV’s. This time they have created a viral video (and perhaps a new genre of viral video) that challenges the viewer to solve a visual trick shown in the video. This new video has already generated 650,ooo views and does a very nice job at demonstrating the quality of the HD video camera that comes with the new Samsung I8910 camera-phone. The video encourages viewers to watch the high-def version of the video to help in solving the riddle. The real purpose of that suggestion of course, is to show-off the quality of the HD video that is captured on the camera-phone.

Judging from the initial viewership and comments the video is already a success. A video response has already been posted using YouTube’s annotation capabilities to reveal the solution to the trick and provide detailed evidence to corroborate the solution.

Would people have watched this video without ‘the challenge’ – no way. If Samsung had created a traditional ad that simply and overtly promoted the high quality HD camera - it would not have spread virally. Nokia, Sony and many other consumer companies are beginning to realize that the reach and impact of a well executed viral video can be far more cost effective than a traditional broadcast ad.

That said, the challenge still remains in creating a video that is compelling enough for people to want to share it – to make it spread virally. Most attempts at viral video are not that compelling. (Calling it viral doesn’t make it so.)

… and broadacast advertisers still has the advantage that even if their ad is absolute crap, some people will still watch it.

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The Geico Gecko goes viral – and risks overexposure.

Published

Jimm Fox

on March 29, 2009

in General

. 0 Comments

The Geico Gecko has made his way to viral videos. Geico, the auto insurance company continues to gain market share through aggressive and persistent marketing. At the center of it’s marketing activities is the iconic Gecko – the lizard with the British accent that seems to be everywhere. Now he’s on YouTube and Metcalfe and…

The Richmond-based Martin Agency has created a series of viral video promotions that inserts the Geico Gecko in a number of popular viral videos like the Gecko dancing in the background with Numa Numa guy (27 millions views) or the Gecko as any one of the popular laughing baby videos or the Gecko taking a picture of himself every day for two years parroting any one of the popular viral videos created by people who actually took the time to take a picture of themselves everyday.

Will these viral videos work? I doubt it – for a number of reasons. There is nothing new here. Every time something succeeds as a viral video a hundred people copy, mimic, lampoon, ‘pay hommage’ and otherwise abuse the concept until it becomes a tired cliche. The first time I saw one of the videos of the daily transformation of someone over a period of months I was mezmerised – it was inventive, interesting and showed a lot of commitment (and free time). Now there are probably 100 versions of this video and it’s lost its appeal. The Gecko version of this video is worse because they didn’t really try that hard – I think they had five or six Gecko outfits (I suppose the wardrobe department had a limited budget) that they repeated so you were bored after the first five seconds. The audio for the laughing baby is great – but you could sync anything or anyone to that laugh and make viewers laugh. The accordion video above - I can’t imagine who would forward that to a friend. “Hey Biff, you have got to see the Gecko on the accordion… he’s eating nachos man!!!”

Viral video is an experiment for most marketers. Geico has the advantage of having a famous icon that is so well known that brand awareness occurs simply by seeing the lizard. To the extent that people actually do forward these videos to other people then they will have succeeded in exposing the Geico brand to those viewers. That said, Geico runs the risk of associating their brand with something that is less than clever and worse, over-exposing the brand icon to the point that the Gecko could start to lose it’s appeal.

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Microsoft promotes IE8 launch with video, lots of video.

Published

Jimm Fox

on March 20, 2009

in Corporate Video Examples, General and Marketing with Video

. 0 Comments

In order to stop or reverse the continuing erosion of Internet browser market share Microsoft is launching it’s revamped browser IE8 (replete with lots of new bells and whistles) with great fanfare. Firefox continues to gain followers, Google is pushing Chrome very hard and the popularity of Apple products will ensure that a small but loyal group will continue to browse the web with Safari. Microsoft is doing it’s best to maintain a 70% market share (down from over 90% a few years ago). While any Microsoft marketing activity can be dismissed as just another dip into their bottomless reserve of cash it is still instructive to look at how they are spending their promotional dollars. This time around they are spending money on video – lots of it.

Microsoft has hired or licensed some know and lesser known comedians and Internet celebrities (i.e. Obama girl and Ask a Ninja) to help create some rather engaging content and also to promote some of the new features of IE8 in a series of videos called ‘The history of the Internet”. It’s well done and worth a look. Interestingly you had to install Silverlight (Microsoft’s competing product to Adobe Flash) to view the videos. I couldn’t find the these videos on YouTube so presumably Microsoft is controlling distribution to encourage people to install Silverlight. I’m not sure this is the best way to encourage the viral spread of a video but I’m sure they know what they are doing…

Aside from the 25 half minute humour clips they have assembled to promote IE8 virally they have also created the following 15 separate marketing videos:

A 30 second commercial that plays on the homepage of the IE8 Site (This video offers the least value of any of the video’s – no one wants to watch a commercial on the web… unless it’s really engaging.)
An overview video that summarizes the features and benefits of the new browser.
5 separate videos that explain the detail of each of the 5 major features.
3 scenario videos that demonstrate popular use-cases for where the new browser features will be used.
4 Partner videos that show how selected Microsoft partners are benefiting from the new features.
A detailed ‘case study’ that details in an interesting comparative format how the new browser is as fast or faster than that of it’s competitors – trying to quell one of the big knocks against the old browser.

This is a smart way to develop video – short form targeted video that highlights a specific idea (feature and/or benefit) to a specific audience. Creating one 30 minute video would have guaranteed that no one watched it. The cost of creating 15 small videos is not that much more than the traditional cost of creating a 30 minute video. Microsoft is obviously committed to using video and sees it as one of the most effective ways of communicating with its online audience.

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‘Be Brave’ – A brilliant PSA / Viral Video by Pfizer Canada

Published

Jimm Fox

on January 20, 2009

in Corporate Video Examples

. 0 Comments

Pfizer Canada along with the Starlight Childrens Foundation introduced a viral video campaign to raise awareness (and money through donations) of the challenges that seriously ill children face. The video was produced by Toronto’s Zig Studio who did a brilliant job at showing that love, support and courage can sometimes be the best medicine. Interestingly there is no dialogue in the video, just a powerful message with an emotional ending. This is not your standard viral video fare and will hopefully raise the bar for other companies looking to take advantage of social media.

Released in the fall it hasn’t received the attention or traction that it’s creators would have liked. It’s difficult to say whether it’s lack of notoriety is because of lack of proper video seeding and promotion or whether YouTube viewers are simply more attuned to dancing cats and kids playing with light sabres. Either way it’s a great piece of video that Pfizer and it’s creators should be proud of.

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Five questions to ask a viral video producer.

Published

Jimm Fox

on December 8, 2008

in Marketing with Video

. 0 Comments

A growing number of video production houses and ad agencies claim to specialize in viral videos. By definition a “viral video” is a web-based video that is so popular that people will want to share it with their friends or colleagues (through social media sites, through email, through IM, through blogs and through media sharing websites). That is a very big promise.

One of the best examples of a successful corporate viral video was created by Blendtec, a Utah-based blender manafuacturer. The company created a wildly popular video promotional series called “Will it blend?” which showcased Blendtec founder, Tom Dickson dumping everything imaginable into a blender to answer the question “Will it blend?” The videos contain an engaging mix of shock, humour and campiness that have generated millions of views. “Will it blend?” has become an Internet meme and the series has generated millions of dollars in increased sales for the company. {The company has even made money from merchandising the ‘Will it blend?’ name and shared advertising revenues generated from Will it Blend? videos on video sharing site Revver.}

So yes, it is possible to generate awareness, buzz and even revenue with viral video but success at the level of ‘Will it Blend?’ is the exception. The challenge is that you have to strike a very delicate balance of entertaining without looking like you are selling. If your video looks like a commercial or a blatant promotion, it won’t be shared. If you create something that is hugely entertaining but does nothing to advance your brand, what’s the point?

It’s also getting much more difficult to break through the chatter. YouTube gets a cajillion new videos uploaded every minute. Yours better be really good.

If you’re thinking of creating a viral video here are five questions you should ask prospective viral video production house:

1. How many viral videos have you done, and for who?
2. How will this video promote my brand? (Most viral video producers squeeze the brand into the video)
3. How will you measure success? If the answer is ‘views’, is there a way to qualify who is viewing it?
4. Do you employ any video seeding strategies, title and thumbnail optimization or other guerrilla techniques that help accelerate video sharing?
5. Are there any guarantees? What if it only gets viewed by 100,000, 10,000, 1,000 or 3 people?

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Tag Archive for 'Viral Video'Page 2 of 2

Samsung’s successful embrace of viral video

The Geico Gecko goes viral – and risks overexposure.

Microsoft promotes IE8 launch with video, lots of video.

‘Be Brave’ – A brilliant PSA / Viral Video by Pfizer Canada

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