For brands seeking to create that all-important buzz, viral video has the potential to spread like wildfire and build instant awareness.
When Wired.co.uk attended an event run by MusicTank, titled “It Started With a Click: How to Spawn a Viral Hit”, the site reported back with the best ways for musical artists to raise their profile using online video.
Scanning the list, we reckon there’s plenty there that applies to any brand or company looking to achieve viral success.
Here is a summary of the key advice from the event:
Have a strong creative idea
Irresistible entertainment is the key to a successful viral video. After all, you’re competing online with other brands, not to mention laughing babies, cute kittens and Charlie Sheen.
Wired.co.uk advises forgetting about focus groups or your core demographic. Just come up with a brilliant piece of content. Make it fun and something that people will actively want to share.
Make it as accessible as possible
Use the most-popular technology that’s available to upload your video, or in other words, use YouTube. It might not be as artsy as Vimeo or Muzu, but it has the broadest reach. That’s not to say that you shouldn’t also upload it to those other sites, if they complement your digital strategy. Ironically, sometimes being taken down from YouTube due to complaints (as happened with M.I.A.’s Born Free video about the targeted massacre of people with red hair) can boost a video’s viral spread. More »
Social video is one of the hot buzzwords flying around, but what does it take to make a viral video truly social rather than just a lonely clip embedded in a website?
Fancy creative and placement on the major social networks is not necessarily enough. A report posted on reelSEO.com slammed those agencies and big brands that continue to treat online video as traditional marketing whacked up online.
Coming under fire was T-Mobile’s Valentine’s Day promotion featuring reality television star Khloe Kardashian. While Kardashian reportedly contributed to the social aspect of the campaign, posting the video to her Facebook and Twitter profiles and her own blog, the report critiqued the ad for seeming inauthentic and failing to engage.
Celebrities don’t automatically add value to video ads, so consider using real people to communicate your message, such as company employees or real customers.
Intel’s new action adventure mini-movie “Chase” is straight in at number one, in the AdAge viral video chart ahead of established favourites such as Evian and Blendtec.
The ad by San Francisco agency Venables Bell & Partners and directed by London-based duo, Smith & Foulkes (Honda “Grrr” and Coca-Cola “Videogame”), is an action-adventure chase sequence in a desktop multi-window environment.
The heroine is pursued by two bad guys through a range of computer applications from iTunes and Adobe Creative Suite to Facebook and more, demonstrating the performance capabilities of Intel’s new Core i5 processors.
The video now stands at almost 2 million views on YouTube – the growth curve of the original (of the seven different videos for the campaign), indicates a spike on Jan 18, which according to AdAge, usually indicates paid promotion, although Intel claims the surge was organic, due to blog coverage.
Trending video on the Viral Video Chart, this incy wincy bit funny ad from Mentos has over 74k views on YouTube and 6K share on Facebook. – With the tagline “It’s better to know what’s coming next.” – this super spider in fact promotes sweets packaged in a predictable order.
Heineken has got their game down when it comes to making viral video, with ‘The Entrance’ their latest online hit, number one in the UK Viral Video Chart this week with 22,498 shares and 2.2m views overall.
The latest wild instalment of Ken Block’s ‘Gymkhana’ format race video virals tops the UK viral chart this week.
Gymkhana THREE, part 2, ‘ultimate playground’ features DC shoes founder Ken Block on a skillful joyride around an urban/rural course climaxing in a sequence where he literally ‘donuts’ the tyres off his Fiesta.
While the appeal is slightly lost on me – I thought he should drive slower around the obstacles so his tyres wouldn’t wear out and he would save petrol – the Gymkhana series of 7 videos have proved extremely popular with more than 70 million views online and received numerous awards. The Gymkhana TWO video was named one of Ad Age’s “Top 10 Viral Ads of All Time””,
The social media stats show 545k+ Facebook shares, almost 15k Tweets and a massive 21+ million views on YouTube.
T-Mobile latest flashmob “Welcome back” a follow up to its award winning “Dance” video viral, looks set to be equally popular, entering the UK viral chart this week at number nine.
The ad – also by Saatchi & Saatchi, features around 300 people breaking into synchronised song and dance, to greet an estimated 35,000 passengers coming through arrivals at Heathrow’s Terminal 5 last Wednesday.
The three-minute ad, which launched simultaneously on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, now rates at over a million views on YouTube and 24K+ shares on Facebook.
The latest in Sesame Street’s parodies turns to advertising. Grover is the Old Spice Guy in this excellent spoof, where “anything is possible when you smell like a monster” 4+ million views on YouTube, 200k share on Facebook. Grover even has own his Facebook page.
The most successful recent brand video virals have been humour driven – Heineken, Old Spice, which makes Dove’s top 5 viral unusual, as it makes a serious point about billboard model images to promote Dove’s ‘campaign for real beauty’. It also manages to achieve that difficult social thing of not appearing ‘fake’ in anyway. 11.5 million views to date. There’s no embed code so click to watch here
While Lady Gaga passed Britney Spears and Ashton Kutcher to become the most followed Twitterer ever (like OMG) with 5.7 million followers this week, Roger Federer’s tennis trick viral for Gillette is the most shared video on Twitter (and on all social media), according to the Viral Video Chart. Nothing fake about his talent, though the staging may raise an eyebrow or two?
For brands seeking to create that all-important buzz, viral video has the potential to spread like wildfire and build instant awareness.
