Just wrapped up a panel on getting ads to go viral, some highlights of successful campaigns:

Human Skateboard video - Initially shot as a TV spot, Sneaux Shoes decided to put it online. Crayon designed a strategy for distributing it across multiple video portals to their target demo, built on blog publicity and a UGC contest to promote it. Steve Coulson says the video achieved about six million views across all syndicated sites.

YouTube Underground contest - According to Christine Beardsell of Digitas, content comes first: if content is good people want to show it to their friends. “In the end it’s about what do they do after that video, what do they get from the video…your money is better spent to create something that is genuine and authentic and then having users engage…that lasts longer in their minds”

Ray-Ban Sunglasses - This was the model everyone was talking about. Brian McCarthy of Revver said one of the great things is that “you don’t know that this is an ad.” The only people can figure it out is by the “never hide” written in dirt on the windshield. But he also cautioned “I think you’re really playing with fire if you don’t call out if it is branded in some way…the audience is so intelligent they don’t want to be dictated to” and there can be real backlash. But it all comes down to the content, if they are entertained as in the Ray-Ban ad, they will be accepting.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 28th, 2007 at 3:49 pm and is filed under Viral, advertising, video syndication. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.