9.30.2008

All is full of love

Kudos to Chris Cunnigham (acclaimed English music video film director and video artist) for making this video with Björk. Absolutly amazing. True roboticalove.

Play with Reactivity

Italian agency Reactivity made the above viral to promote ‘reactivity’. A Reactivity creative helps a lazy backpacker to collect money, using a totally different approach. At the site www.playwithreactivity.com you can test your reactivity. (source: viralblog.com)

Lacoste Future

As a celebration of their 75th anniversary, Lacoste unveiled a breath-taking futuristic 3D spot with a companion mini site.
The theme of the spot is “Let’s Reinvent The Game” and depicts the future of tennis with a projection of what how tennis will be like after 75 years, in 2083. (Source: Trendhunter, viralblog.com)
ue="http://www.youtube.com/v/DP9rm8AtFXk&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en&fs=1">

Sharksurfer & BikeChaser

Viral for the sunglasses Notorious

LEGO Indiana Jones viral

Fictional adventurer, professor of history and archeology Indiana Jones first appeared in the 1981 film Raiders of the Lost Ark. Now, 27 years later, he’s back with “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull”. To promote the LEGO Indiana Jones game Electronic Arts and LEGO developed the “Giant LEGO Boulder” viral, which was recorded in San Francisco. (Source: Nu.nl, viralblog.com)

Learn science

To promote Marie Curie Actions this video, titled ‘Chemical Party‘, was launched. Several infuential blogs, like TED and New Scientist, wrote about the commercial. (source: viralblog.com)

Line Rider Burger

More and more brands use internet trends for advertising and marketing purposes, and McDonalds is the newest player to step up to the plate. They’ve taken Line Rider and created a typical McDonalds ad out of it. We’ve seen many beautiful Line Rider creations before, and this one is a beauty as well. The commercial got about 175.000 views in two weeks time. (source: virablog.com)

The classic Helium pants

This is how we party

The British Home Office launched a new campaign to warn 18 to 24 year olds for the dangers of excessive drinking, titled “Know Your Limits”. The campaign, made by VCCP Digital and filmed by Independent’s director Mathew Jarrett, has the tag line “You wouldn’t start a night like this, so why end it that way?” and consists of display advertising and 3 viral videos.

Recent research by the European Union shows over 40% of the Brits aged from 18 to 24 can be classified as excessive drinkers. (Source: Home Office. Viralblog.com)

9.28.2008

If you don’t blink, you’ll miss it.

High oops-factor ahead. It’s all about the dangers of focusing too much. Educational and kind of scary.



By Gorgeous Enterprises and WCRS. Client: Transport for London. (source viralblog.com)

9.26.2008

DIESEL XXX SFW PARTY AD (Not safe for work)

It may be adult, but is it mature? This one had us rolling on the floor, howling with mirth. Especially at the lady with the accordion. Diesel continue their long tradition of pointless-but-likeable-and-somehow-relevant-just-the-same-semi-experimental advertising with this new viral, based on those groooovy 70’s porn movies. Long may it reign. This viral was made by Viral Factory.




YouTube is constantly deleting this clip, so please don't flame us if the link's broken. Try this: Diesel XXX
Diesel SFW XXX invitation to 30th birthday party on 11th October 2008. DIESEL XXX ‘S.F.W’. Diesel xxx viral commercial.

A proven distribution method.

Mr Wind

Produced by Nordpol Hamburg for Epuron.

Use a condom. Or else.

Genuinely chilling take on the fact that hiv infection increases the most among heterosexual women in their 30s.
We're generally not too sure about negative messages like this, but maybe it's time for a new scare in this case? There seems to be a lot of complacency about when it comes to hiv/aids. If so, these horrifyingly tender executions might be just the ticket.



Agency: Ogilvy Lisboa / Creativ Director: Edson Athayde, Paul Smith / Producer: Stink

9.25.2008

Define "extreme"..?

Ok, so it’s a nicely faked stunt and a well executed film, but hey, the packshot is a bit of comedown, isn’t it? Sure, Cooper Minis are nice, plucky little cars, but they’re hardly the epitome of ”extreme”, are they? Cue wildly clanging irrelevance alarms.

Runaway pants

Cutwater, the people behind this Levi's viral, have quite a track record. First, they did "Backflip into jeans". Then "Helium jeans". Then this. Sorry, but we don't get it. Please enlighten us.

Jeep - have fun out there

You have the worst storm since 1974, why not have some fun? Exclusive amateur footage taken outside local shops in Nelson, New Zealand - with CGI additions. Nice, creative recycling. May not go down a storm (pun intended) in New Orleans, though.


Energy conservation made difficult

A sizeable proportion of all the viral films clogging up the internet these days depict people doing perfectly simple things in pointlessly complicated ways. A good example is this viral, by Grey/London.
The client was Madrid City Council (who you’d think would prefer to support local business..?) and the brief to increase the local’s energy awareness. Solution: let two guys calling themselves The Light Pong Masters do impossible stuff with ping pong balls to turn the lights off in their apartment. Sort of like a less potentially destructive indoor version of Nike’s ”parkour basketball” virals. It fails utterly att conveying the message that energy conservation is EASY, but we liked it anyway.

Follow Your INSTINCT

The first commercial ever to use annotations. If you have no idé what were talking about just try it here:

The skype laughter chain has started

Collaborative viral initiatives are rare, but when they surface the campaigns are highly successful. More information soon. Please check back, and visit skypelaughterchain.com

Lets blend a NIKE

It seems like Nike and Blendtec made a deal for this video; listen how Tom carefully emphasizes the features of the Nike shoes.

This beer is fake.

Two remarkable ads (”Heineken: Suicide” and “Heineken: Blowjob“), suggestively made by Heineken turn out to be fakes, made by students of the Dutch Hallo Academie. This is Suicide:

Faceless people

Car manufacturer Lotus launches a marketing campaign to introduce their forthcoming Lotus Eagle. Faceless people are showing up at events in Great Britain leading to speculations and media attention (on ABC News, The Daily Mail and Metro UK). Faceless people site

DC Shoes. Where it all started.

DC Shoes viral. You might have seen the Nike one with the schoolgirls shooting hoops(see the clip after the DC clip), well this is the original.

Berfishocca

Berocca is a tablet containing a specific combination of B group vitamins and Vitamin C, manufactured by Bayer. To promote the tablets Bayer made the “Berfishocca” viral, which has been viewed by over 1 million people since it was uploaded July first.

Yes, now we know.

Provocative, thought-provoking, uncomfortably entertaining and painfully educational. Spread the word.

Cadbury gorilla goes apeshit

Yes, it’s very gorilla, very guerilla and extremely viral. The company behind this spoof on Cadbury’s simian version of Phil Collins definitely manages to make a point about what they’re about. Their gorilla suit budget is noticeably lower than the original's, though.

9.24.2008

The saddest picture in the world.

Oh, we just love this. Because it's hysterically funny in a snobbishly high-brow way (i e: it suits our self-image). And also strangely poignant (I mean... an actual cat with a pipe... it's really heartrending, isn't it..?). And furthermore, it's also proof positive of the fact that in order to reach one target group, you often need to exclude another. The measure of this film's succes in that department may be found in the criminally low viewcount. Hm.

Big cat tearjerker = megaviews!

We’re not absolutely sure - the clip is avalable in several different versions - but this one’s scored at least 25 million views on YouTube. The story is heartwarming in itself and the clip is more or less guaranteed to draw an ”aaaaaaaah...” from the lips of even the most haredened viewers (that’s us), DESPITE the yucky soundtrack. Furthermore, these two Aussie amateur lion tamers are currently talking to Sony about the feature film rights to their story. And on the internet, the marketing campaign has already begun, virally. The wave of the future?

The ping pong man will get ya.

Billy Marks bounces a ping pong ball into a cup. Which is a bit of a simplifaction, actually.
It might be on the level, it might be done with piano wire and mirrors, it might be CGI. Either way, we can't help wondering if this guy hasn't got anything better to do? On the other hand, as commercial applications of the viral format become more common, it might land him a million-dollar contract with a ping pong ball manufacturer. Or maybe he's already got one?

How to track your viral


A while back, Google Analytics and YouTube introduced YouTube Insight, a tool to provide more information about the people viewing your videos on www.youtube.com. It’s pretty cool stuff and if you’re posting videos to YouTube it provides a lot of great information. But theres a better way! Go here to read more about it Web analytics

9.23.2008

Blair Witch project




The Blair Witch Project is a low-budget American horror film released in 1999. Though the film is entirely fictional, the narrative is presented as a documentary pieced together from amateur footage. It tells the story of three young student filmmakers (Heather Donahue, Joshua Leonard, and Michael Williams) who go into the Black Hills of Burkittsville, Maryland to film a documentary about the eponymous local legend known as the Blair Witch. The three students never come back. Neither the students nor their bodies are ever found, although their video and sound equipment (along with most of the footage they shot) is discovered a year later. The film was viral marketed heavily via the Internet, and parts of the film were aired on the Independent Film Channel's Split Screen TV series, leading to heated speculation on the Internet as to whether the film was real or not. To reinforce this idea, the Sci-Fi Channel aired a fake documentary, Curse of the Blair Witch, that claimed to investigate the legend surrounding the movie right before the film's release. The program contained interviews with friends and relatives of the missing students, paranormal experts, and local historians (all fabricated, of course). This was done so extensively that the three main actors were listed for a time as "missing, presumed dead" on IMDb. The film was featured in the Guinness Book of Records as having the highest profit-to-cost ratio of a motion picture ever, making back over US$10,000 dollars for every dollar spent.

Sprite Viral

Captain Morgan Viral Ad

Time of my life

This dude takes 2 pictures of him self each day for 17 years. Thats kinda cool, but then again, why?

Mercedes Benz

ok, THIS we like. Kudos to MB!

For a hundred million reasons

Energy Wasting day, what a waste...

Flying car, this time for REAL!

Well, no. But at least its not computer animated CGI this time. Can you figure out how its done? We did ;)

The Human Website!

To show their work to clients, creative collective Happy Soldiers had a bit of fun on stage with a human website.
Love the concept, even if the execution is a bit too grade-school cabaret for our taste. But mark our words, someone will nick this idea for a commercial (viral or push) before too long. It might even be us. :-)

Just what we always needed...

... a way to finally make men notice women's breasts.
One interesting thing: despite the fact that this has the word "breast" in the titel, the number of hits is not that impressive. BTW: notice that the guy in the elevator sniffs his own tie for a split second as the doors open. It's all in the detail.

Central Park Coke/Mentos geyser. Not.

This is an interesting one, in a way. It depicts Eepybird’s attempt to create a live event around their trademark Coke/Mentos stunt in Central Park, NYC. Which failed miserably, due to administrative problems (read: failure to obtain the necessary permits). But either way, they got to write autographs, give away huge amounts of diet cola and mint chewies and the film itself is coming along nicely. Moral: if you’re a YouTube celebrity, even non-events will get views.

9.22.2008

Budlight + Semi Pro = True



And then some more Will Ferrell Bush viral:

Flying Cars debut in GM viral

Hats off to General Motors for this refreshing viral advertising campaign featuring flying cars. I almost hesitate to reveal GM as the sponsor because conspiracy theories would be more fun (and they’re already taking place).

Source: http://nalts.wordpress.com/2006/09/15/flying-cars-debut-in-gm-viral-video-campaign/

How to sell soap

A short movie about viral marketing produced by vm-people, a company based in Berlin, German. www.vm-people.de

Quicksilver - Dynamite surfing viral

The perfect pour is perfect for Coors Light

Professional beer pourer cracks open some amazing tricks. Imagine how awesome he is at bar games. Watch for the Hook Shot, Flamingo Style, and the Double Inverted. It's either the can or this guy has some zen thing going on with the beer molecules.

9.19.2008

Will it blend? We guess so

Ok, so you probably seen this by now. This is the viral classic from 2007 that hit youtubes top 5 most viewed in almost no time at all. We hope Blendtec will blend for ever and ever.

How to make 3,5 million people take a particle physics lecture

"Large hadron collider" must have been one of the most popular Google and YouTube searches during the last few weeks. Which probably provides part of the explanation for this films 3.5 million viewership so far. The other parts are probably a) that's it's pretty catchy in it's own geeky way and b) that it actually explains stuff. Kind of like a 50 min science special on tv condensed into slightly less than five minutes. With a beat. And we LOVE the hard hats.
We don't think CERN emplyee Cate McAlpine (a k a Alpinekat) had a clue to what would happen when she recorded and uploaded this. But that's the nature of the viral beast.

Post-It note mania

The guys who brought you Mentos and Coke are back with their next big experiment. There isn't any science involved this time, unless you count gravity, but it's still spectacular. Never before has such blatant waste of office supplies been more entertaining.
This film also provides a clue as to why these guys haven't been heard of for a while: apparently they've spent 18 months un- and resticking post-it-pads. (original video is take off Youtube, but I'v found these for you :) Enjoy)

So Relaxed - ExtendedStay Hotels

Ok, so you love the smell of a damp futon in the morning, but would you like to stay here?
Another testament to the Undying Comical Power of Flatulence, and a pretty perfect example of the kind of viral ad that has the full production gloss of a tv spot but will NEVER make it to the airwaves. Which was never the intention, of course. That's another reason why ad people love YouTube and virals: now, there's a forum for the most far-out, tasteless and non-PC ideas, the one's that use to make us roll on the floor laughing before killing them ("nah, they'd never dare show it."). These days, we can always slap them on the net. Happy days.

I'm a...whaaat..?

Did anyone else start to hear "I'm pissy" after the first times..? Ok, we influenced you by saying so, but somehow, we can't help wondering if this shouldn't have been road-tested a bit more before launch..? Otherwise, after the Gates/Seinfeld romp, it's sort of comforting to see MS back in their old fun-free form again. Oh well.

9.18.2008

Bill & Jerry out connecting

Ok, not many people love Microsoft, but Bill seems to be slowly turning into everybody's favourite nerd. Microsoft has put 300 million dollars into the making of this (how much of it is mr Seinfeld's fee is anybody's guess - it doesn't really seem to be the production values, does it?).
So, is this going to make people change from Mac OS to Vista? We don't think so, but then again, we ARE in the ad business. But it's hard not to like Bill and Jerry. A classic case of buying sympathy and paying in entertainment.



We just HAD to sneak this in, ok?

9.17.2008

So good it hurts

The first time we saw this, our jaws dropped, our minds boggled and we had our flabbers well and truly gasted. A viral loop promo for the Dexter serial killer series, so well executed it's almost scary for real. Click the link below and freak out your friends.

See the viral-promotion for showtime Dexter here: Sliceoflifetv.com

Cell phone popcorn viral? Marketer-created of course

Those videos with cell phones popping corn have been floating around since May 28 and have garnered much discussion surrounding their validity. While cell phones can fry your head and reportedly cause cancer, they don't pop corn. They can, however, take on a starring role in a series of videos for Bluetooth headset maker Cardo Systems. (Thanks adrants.com)

Bud Light's 'Swear Jar' Scores 'Outstanding Commercial' Emmy

Produced by DDB/Chicago via Hungry Man. The PR folk say it's been watched 12 million times online and has never appeared on TV. Bud light swearing.

Brylcreem's Effortless + The making



9.16.2008

"Evil eye baby" and other big-hit toddlers

And here we are, trying to be wildly inventive and hysterically funny, suffering indigestion and insomnia (perhaps even impotence, where applicable) desperately trying to come up with the perfect viral. And it turns out that all you need to rack up the megaviews are a moronically giggling rugrat and a cam cellphone. Makes you think.



Over 10 million views since december 2007



Over 60 million views since november 2006



Over 50 million views since may 2007

Homemade Ford Balloons

During last years Champions League final on May 23th Ford launched it’s new Mondeo commercial. In the clip several cars are floating through the air, carried by balloons. An article on Creativereview.co.uk explains which techniques were used to get the carbon cars airborne. According to a Scottish scientist you need 82.000 helium filled balloons to get a real Mondeo off the ground. Three guys from Auckland, New Zealand tried to prove him wrong by using just 5.000 helium filled balloons. They posted the video they made about a month ago, creating a fair amount of buzz. Looking at youtube, Fords original clip got 60.000 views, but the homemade Ford balloons got 1,4million hits!



Ford Mondeo 2007 Commercial (Balloon Duet Version)


Update: Homemade Ford balloons spoof! Behind the scenes of the homemade Ford balloons ad.

Every song tells a story...

Commercial take on the classic "misheard lyrics"-type viral. Or "turkhitz", for our Swedish readers. Great concept for a langauge institute but we're not 100% sure about the execution...

Great viral success with fly for fortune!

In November 2006 KLM Royal Dutch Airlines flew to viral success with it’s Fly For Fortune campaign.

A Pixar alike viral movie trailer was targeted with social media planning and naturally seeded by LaComunidad and dominated the social universe, reaching millions of people without buying any media space. The KLM viral movie trailer was viewed 8 million times in 90 days, a large chunk came from European and Asian video portals. Global viral tracking was done with ViralTracker.

787.000 unique visitors visited the KLM mirco website developed by Publicis Dialog. Due to all inbound links at blogs and social media, the KLM micro-site hit Google pagerank 6/10 within a few weeks. The game Fly For Fortune was played 1.1 million times and KLM realized 210.000 new opt-in e-mail addresses in the campaign period.

KLM increased it’s online ticket sales and the return of investment of this viral campaign was 1200%. Fly For Fortune won the Bronze Esprix in The Netherlands for most effective campaign and also Bronze at the IMC Europe Awards.

Now, is the viral movie KLM made any good? Since it's been viewed 8million times it must be, right? Right!? No. Its total and utterly crap, but hey, it worked! You just have to love the viral effect. Goviral once said, content is nothing, spreading is all. Amen

(Thank you viralblog.com for the information.)

Clusta chaos + Behind the scenes

Let's face it, there's just something about this kind of Rube Goldbergiana that never ceases to fascinate. See also the cream of the crop, Honda Cog, further down. And the behind-the-scenes spinoff is a must, too. Many of them seem to be racking up almost as many views as the original film. Which of course is well worth remembering for the aspiring viralist.



9.15.2008

The secret behind successful viral film production

This one makes us blush.

Movie-free movie trailer

This is the first movie trailer we've ever seen that does not feature any scenes from the actual movie at all. We don't know if someone was trying to prove a point or if it simply seemed like a good idea at the time. Works for us, though, there's some sort of very basic principle of communication going on somewhere behind this. We'll get back to you when we've figured out what it is.

Skydiving Live With Honda



This is, as far as we know, a first: a live tv ad. It was broadcast live and direct from Madrid on UK's Channel 4 on may 29 this year, as a part of the launch of the new Honda Accord model. Obviously, the skydivers weren't the only ones taking a risk here. Or so it would seem - it turns out they had a rehearsal jump from the previous day in the can as weather insurance.
Of course, the clip is still alive and kicking as a viral film, having racked up at least several hundred thousand views so far. But, watching it, there's no doubt that the media WAS the message. Fresh thinking, none the less.

You can never go wrong with a gorilla suit, can you?

If you’re in the ad business, this sort of thing sets off a whole imaginary behind-the-scenes movie in you head. You try to imagine the ideas session: ”Man, I’ve got it! A guy in a gorilla suit playing along with Phil Collins’ ’In the Air Tonight’!!” ”Sweeeet, man, here’s the strapline: ’a glass and a half full of joy’!” ”Brilliant, let’s go for a pint!”. Not to mention the client presentation: ”What it’s got to do with the product? Aha, you obviously missed the purple wall behind the ape!”.
And yet, it works. Like a charm. It upped Cabury’s sales by 9%. Sure, they poured a total of £ 6.2 million into the campaign, but just the same. Ye who enter the ad business, abandon all logic.

Goodbye, Mary



Guerrilla marketing seems to be all around us. Slate V contributor Scott Blaszak imagines what the next, heartbreaking step might be.

Meet Mark. An actor hired by a viral marketing firm to promote the upcoming movie The Women starring Meg Ryan, Eva Mendes, Debra Messing and Jada Pinkett Smith in a totally new way! Mark (brilliantly played by Ryan James) started a relationship in June with Mary, a social connector, as part of a guerrilla marketing campaign for Picture House Entertainment. Watch his confession to Mary. Genius!! (Thanks to viralblog.com)

Please Viral-loop me!



Ok, so whats a viral loop? To define the viral loop, you can think of it as: The steps a user goes through between entering the site to inviting the next set of new users. The viral process has gone from: "Register -> Use Product -> Evaluate Product -> Tell friends" to: "Register -> Tell friends -> Use Product -> Evaluate Product."

Read more here: Whats your viral

From nerd to superstar in one viral


Swedish company Informator makes viral video for 18.000$ to change the way we see technerds.

– Filmen vi har skapat är riktad mot systemutvecklare. De är en väldigt avgränsad målgrupp, men de som har kommenterat den har varit positiva, says Caroline Oscarson projectleader at Gyro, the agency.

Read more here (in swedish)

9.14.2008

118 118 making the hondadream in its own way

9.12.2008

Truth in Advertising



This is our story. No, really.

Converse



On a shoe string films. Just click this link to see it in action: www.onashoestringfilms.com

I want to live in Miami



Sony, Soap and Miami. Soap is your best friend.

The making of the award-winning Honda Cog commercial



Ok, so in the international conspiracy community, the word is that it's all CGI anyway. On the other hand, some of those guys believe that the British royal family are lizards from outer space. We refuse to speculate.

Neverhides first viral for Rayban

Acupuncture at its best



The client is a Dutch insurance company (apparently, our Dutch is rusty to the point of non-existence). The point being made is obviously that absolutely anything can happen in traditional oriental medicine. Skin-tinglingly good.

Engels leren?



Classic, banned from tv. Which probably helped it gain classic status no end. We can't help wondering what the agency said when the client pointed out that you have to know a bit of English to get it. However, we stand thoroughly entertained, and thus ready to forgive all.

Ray-ban wayfarer



Smart viral for Rayban. Its the Never hide team that nails it again. Anyone knows the story behind these guys?

Honda, you have to love it - Honda Cog commercial




Absolutely beautiful. Dare to be different. 8 months of planning and millions in the making. Thank you Honda for making Rube Goldberg like nobodys business.