What can Christmas lights in sequence to music teach us about social objects?

We here at Amnesia Razorfish talk about the value of social objects when looking at how can brands can enter social media. What’s a social object you ask? Anything that people feel compelled to share in a digital landscape. Photos, games, jokes, songs, videos.. and the holy grail, memes.

What binds all of these ‘objects’ together is the simple proposition that the content appealed to someone enough to motivate them to want to share it with their friends. Whether this is because it made that person laugh, cry, revere or repel, it triggered an emotion that caused an effect – they passed it on.

But finding the key to understanding what triggers people to want to pass content on is difficult and takes considered insight. Most brands will fail in their attempts to ‘make something go viral’ and even believe that because they didn’t get 1 million hits on YouTube with that shiny new TVC, that social media isn’t a worthwhile platform for them or for their marketing budgets.

But there are a few basic rules in successful content. And as ’tis the season for all things Christmas (and today being my last day of working in 2010) I wanted to share some fantastic pieces of ‘viral’ content that have garnered the magical seven-figure views.

This magical Christmas lights video is currently sitting on 8,183,000 views. Pretty crazy eh?

Slayer (heavy metal) meets sequenced lights. Rad. And it’s appealed to 1,587,000 people.

It’s pretty slick, but still obviously a ‘home-made job’, but 1,641,000 people watched it.

Because you can’t blog about memes without a LOLcat, this one just makes it in. Sitting at 3,757,000 views, it’s got legs (or is that fur?).

So I’ll leave you with a challenge to find and share your favourite Christmas videos.  And have a very Merry Christmas, and a safe and Happy New Year!

~ Karalee Evans, Social Strategy Manager x

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