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There's a lot of buzz for this viral video from VW (currently close to 2 million views on YouTube).



It's clever and entertaining, but I keep wondering why it is we like it and I can only assume it's because it shows a brand really going out of its way to make people's lives more fun.

You could hire an expensive director and produce an elaborate ad that shows exactly the same thing, but it would not have half the power or potency, which tells us something about the weakness of advertising.

The VW film is engaging and interactive because there's an interesting concept (the challenge of an alternative route), you know its real and you want to see how the people react (will they take the long road, if it's more fun) and this is the piece that draws you in.

In reality, it's the next best thing to make a great product, it's clever, live experiential communication that can be shared.

While the linkage of the idea to VW is a little stretched, you overlooked that and end up just feeling good about the brand.

I guess there's a lesson here.

How can you create something real that has a conceptual idea at it's heart and provides a fun, interesting, positive and engaging experience for people?

Posted by Ed Cotton It's now clear that viral and social media has reached something of a threshold that it's now fair game for specialists to thrive in the marketplace. Both areas have won over the the client cynics and now mass brands are eager to explore new venues in these domains.

Looking at the world of viral, it seems to have shifted into a new gear recently. The LED sheep film for Samsung is evidence of the sophistication of viral. It's no longer a one hit gag wonder, it's layered and detail and full of lots of elements.



Recent work for the MINI Clubman (not done at BSSP), also hints at a new sensibility. One where the tricks of the viral trade are so well known, that it's now time for an ironic wink and a nod at the medium.



With social media's accelerated rise thanks to Facebook and Twitter, clients are now all over these worlds and looking for answers. This new world is incredibly labor intensive and involves all kinds of discrete skill sets from monitoring and analysis, through to smart strategic responses.

It's now clear that creating a great viral or building and executing a smart social media strategy are very specific skills that demand subtle and nuanced understanding of the medium. They also require bandwidth and speed of response.

Ad agencies aren't that well equipped to play in this space, given their fundamental skills are all about creating commercial messages, not bare bones, message free entertainment. In social media, it's about having specific tools, data sets and people skilled in the media who can create responses and ideas with social applicability.

In the short term, this will force agencies to identify and work with third parties to engage in this practices, where strategically relevant.

In the medium term, agencies with an eye to the future to re-inventing themselves will be wise to bring these new and very different skill sets in-house.


Posted by Ed Cotton It's clear the real time communication is becoming the thing and the faster this moves the sleepier and sleepier the ad world starts to look.

With each component part of communication development taking so long, what with focus groups, quant testing, pre-prod, production, post production and the like, by the time we have something to say, it's either a generality or the conversation has moved on.

The speed of the Christian Bale remix and mash-up movement last week was astonishing. High quality, imaginative and hugely viral material was created just hours after TMZ released the audio track.

Christian Bale's unfortunate antics became common shared currency around the world and proved itself to be the antidote to all the doom and depression in the news. It made people laugh, just at the moment when they most needed to.

While the initial news was crazy enough and warranted sharing, the arrival of the remixers and mash-up artists added more interest and creativity to the story.

Brands in this environment have to create "A Bale" and/or "A Bale Remix".

What I mean by "A Bale" is not that they suddenly develop an appetite for foul language, but instead create massively powerful ideas that cause ripples around the conversational web. I am not suggesting the Christian Bale news in an example of an amazing idea, but it is an example of breakthrough. Given that brands can't push the controversial button too far, they must and can only resort to wonderful, brash, imaginative and highly original ideas to get that breakthrough and force people to stand up, take notice and talk.

Alternatively, there's a "Bale Remix", where you at light speed latch onto someone else's idea or conversation and remix it, twist it and change it into something that gets people talking.

For either of these things to happen it's imperative that brands and their agencies do two things.

1. They become remarkably adept at understanding the cultural conversation in real-time

2. They change their process so they can respond to appropriately to the conversation. This means shrinking the planning process from weeks down to hours.

Many may argue that the best agencies and brands can handle point 1 because they are loaded with insightful individuals who are masters of human emotion and storytelling and that if they get this right, who cares about the real-time conversation?

The reality is that context and the wrapping around those emotions is critical, get it right and you're a phenom, get it very slightly wrong and no one will notice you or care.

It's on point 2, agencies are particularly vulnerable with their fixed and lengthy processes. They are dangerously exposed to new entrants who can exploit this. One could easily imagine a media entity like YouTube setting up a creative dept using its best mash-up artists and re-mixers and being retained by clients for viral assignments. Client risk aversion and lawyers might be holding this back for the moment, but that will change.

The demands in this new world are two-fold; light-speed and cultural aptitude.

it might just be time to blow things up.

Posted by Ed Cotton You can't create something culturally relevant without an understanding of contemporary culture and its manifestations.

The "Unboxing Video" category has been with us for years and its format is widely recognized and understood by tech geeks.

It's a sub-genre of new media that's ready, primed and waiting for someone to do something creative with.

Nice work!!

Via Random Culture




Posted by Ed Cotton The French act Daft Punk have been around for over 10 years, but have recently returned to dominance through a series of impressive live shows.



I was wondering if all those hand videos on the internet had also helped the band in someway?

It all started with this one in June 2007.



This was the first and has over 12 million views, that's six times the number of views the band's concert video above achieved!

By August someone had reworked another Daft Punk song using their hands

That one has over 1.2 million views.

In October, a "bodies" version emerged which has achieved over 1.5 million views.



There are close to 500 films of people trying to Daft Hands and despite the fact this meme is months old, people are still doing it.

It's a great example of herd mentality in action. The idea is really simple, but there's just enough complexity to it that makes it interesting and it willingly encourages others to show they can do it.

There's are some lessons here if you want to use people as your media and get some viral buzz going.

1.Start with a strange and original take on something

2.Keep production limited to low or no production- make it easy to do and replicate

3.Set it up as a challenge- have some complexity

4.Make it invitational

5.Dont' forget the herd- copying is good, it means you belong



Posted by Ed Cotton A post appeared on Techcrunch recently the created something of a frenzy around the ethics of viral videos and their marketing.

For any of you who believe ethics are involved, forget it. It appears people are doing whatever they can to game the system to their advantage, employing tactics that would have client and agency lawyers ready to jump from the 20th floor.

Here's are some of the highlights from the post.

The Film

1. Make it short: 15-30 seconds

2. Design for remixing: create a video that is simple enough to be remixed over and over again by others.

3. Don’t make an outright ad: if a video feels like an ad, viewers won’t share it unless it’s really amazing. Ex: Sony Bravia

4. Make it shocking: give a viewer no choice but to investigate further. Ex: “UFO Haiti”
Use fake headlines: make the viewer say, “Holy shit, did that actually happen?!

5. Appeal to sex: if all else fails, hire the most attractive women available to be in the video.

Seeding

1. Blogs: We reach out to individuals who run relevant blogs and actually pay them to post our embedded videos. Sounds a little bit like cheating/PayPerPost, but it’s effective and it’s not against any rules.

2. Forums: We start new threads and embed our videos. Sometimes, this means kickstarting the conversations by setting up multiple accounts on each forum and posting back and forth between a few different users. Yes, it’s tedious and time-consuming, but if we get enough people working on it, it can have a tremendous effect.

For all I know, agencies might be doing this, but if they aren't, someone else will be. The world has gotten tougher, alot tougher. Not only is this challenging on moral grounds, if you are prepared to put that aside, there's an incredible amount of  work needed to make viral success happen.

Thanks to Podcasting News.




Posted by Ed Cotton