Christmas is a lively time of the year with everyone feeling quite festive and eager to have fun, last year Amnesia celebrated it whilst lawn bowling and it reminded me of a bad episode of ‘Murder she wrote’, (sorry Jessica Fletcher)
Put it this way if the grinch stole Christmas that year, I wouldn’t exactly be over-exerting myself to try and stop him.
This year a few of us decided to stir things up and let me tell you…you can never have enough sauce.
The 2011 xmas party is a secret yet to be revealed and we decided to make a teaser trailer as a lead up to our short film to get everyone excited.
We’ve seen many a fake viral fall flat in the past; most notably the high profile backfire of Naked’s Witchery viral in early 2009. It’s true you can’t fool a YouTube audience. However, Hi-Tec have made a masterful attempt at tricking YouTubers into thinking a group of european thrill seekers have managed to run on water. Gullible bogans. Lots of people have called it, but many people seem to have been taken in:
… or are they?? Or have CCCP (the dutch ad agency behind this genius) done the sensible thing and flooded the comments board with a load of bollocks to make you put all logical thought to one side and think this is actually real. I sincerely hope these comments are genuine, but sadly I suspect the most gullible ones are not.
I have to admit it had me going until I saw this shot:
… and the bit with men running on water.
As an agency, we don’t create “viral videos”. We create pieces of content that, given the right ingredients, we hope will achieve viral status.
So I thought it would be worth deconstructing the ingredients of one of the best ‘fake virals’ I’ve seen.
This isn’t the newest fantastic piece of animation around, but we haven’t mentioned it here yet – and it’s well worth watching. Produced by Sugimoto Kousuke (director) and Manabe Takayuki (music), it’s an excellent example of carefully combining sweet animation with thumping beats.
How you can not watch something with a scene like this? I don’t know. Click through to see the video.
It’s been a crazy week for fans of the Portal that have been following the gaming press. After last patching the game with minor fixes in June 2009, Valve have pushed two cryptic updates live for the game this week, both of which made changes to the game itself.
The first added several radios to the game’s levels in addition to the ones already present in the game. Usually these just play some fairly crazy, mexican sounding musak, but several forum-posters on various sites have found that placing these radios on the various red buttons scattered throughout the game as part of the game mechanics, causes them to broadcast a new series of signals.
Things only get crazier from there. Portal fans from a bunch of fan forums, bless ’em, have examined the transmissions and managed to decode them into morse code and images of security camera footage from Aperture Labs – the installation the game takes place in. The rabbit hole went further, though, as an MD5 hashed phone number for an old-school Bulletin Board Service was found in the images which itself had MORE cryptic images.
I love that Valve put this stuff out there knowing that their fans are crazy enough to do the work. I guess that’s what happens when you have to wait so long for sequel announcements! <cough>Episode 3</cough>
The second update to the game, which JUST went live actually changed the game’s ending – albeit very slightly.
What do you get if you take a ukulele, a 6 year old and the most popular song of 2008?
Forget kittens & unicorns, this video is pretty much one of the cutest things we’ve ever seen.
At over 540,000 views in 5 days, we predict he’ll be at well over two million by mid next week!
Got a recipe for a better viral video? We’d love to hear it!
The song is I’m Yours, by Jason Mraz.
10 million viral Wedding views in a week on Youtube can do wonders for music sales, even if you’re Chris Brown languishing in a career low point (here). Neilsen points out (here) that Brown’s track Forever from 2008 was nowhere to be seen until this week, but is now in the top 10 for the US and Australia. The only possible reason being the Viral Wedding video which has a link to the track on iTunes. It raises some interesting points on the usage rights. Several people here pointed out that many similar videos have had the audio stripped by YouTube for copyright violation, yet this is a clear case of win-win for everyone involved. A clear indication to the Music industry that a social media model for music sales exists.
From a genuinely random and spontaneous twitter experiment (here) that led to Coke and Pepsi becoming ‘friends’ on Twitter there’s been a fair bit of press coverage. Nice to see Biz Stone, founder of Twitter tweet it out too (here). Maybe Twitter Hugs are something we’ll see more of in the future. Adding links below as they come in:
This is doing the rounds via email and also on twitter (here and here). They are really funny (esp if these are genuine posts by a real person)… but is it the same if an agency does it on behalf of a client?
I wrote about ‘fake virals here a month ago – so it will be interesting to see where this ends up.
With all the posts signed as “Craig” we were thinking it might be Craigs List? What do you think is this real or fake????
Today I presented at the 6th Annual Future of Digital Advertising for the IAB and AIMIA (#foda09 on Twitter). I talked about a few things, shared some insight on what I thought (hopefully) could help the digital industry further itself this year.
The main body of my preso was on the digital consumer and how brands need reconsider their approach, especially when using social as a tool. I discussed social objects – good ones, bad ones, great ones. I talked about Digital Brand DNA- something that Joe Crump our Razrofish NY Creative Director has pioneered with his ‘Digital Darwinism’ presentations.
In the last year I have come to believe strongly that great digital creative usually contains 7 digital brand genes that Joe Crump identified. See his full preso and video from Cannes (here):
OK, so what about that Naked / Witchery Viral? (I’ve embedded their YouTube campaign in case you missed it). It’s clearly a bigger story than I realised (the SMH and Naked have both been in touch with me today as a result). The thing is, I like Naked as an Agency – I like the way they challenge, stand up, break things, and do things that are counter intuitive. I know the guys well and we’ve worked with them many times on probably 6 or more different clients. In fact they’re one of the best agencies in town to collaborate with especially when it comes to their open approach to digital.
So what’s wrong with the above and why bother raising it, especially in a public forum? Well as you may have gathered my problem is not with Naked at all, it is with fake viral in general. In fairness, Naked were one example of a few I showed. QLD Tourism and Nike were both raised. We have a mountain to climb to be accepted (as advertisers and brands) into the new consumer landscape and these social channels are theirs, not ours. I know that consumers genuinely welcome cool clever intelligent advertising – but I cannot see any evidence that they like being deceived routinely. Comments below the videos often do the talking, especially when the deception is revealed.
Fake Viral for Nike feat Taylor Momsen
I’m a big believer in being able to make mistakes in the search for progress (digital is a tough gig, and there are new things we learn every day so mistakes do happen), but why the same mistake over and over? I also can’t understand why the elements of risk associated with generating negative brand sentiment in consumer channels are not better understood. As I tried to point out today, the 2.5m tweets per day, 915,000 blogs per day are heavily indexed by Google and can quickly produce negative organic search results. Let’s face it – search is very important, especially if you are a digital ROI client. Why would any company want to see their first page of Google results polluted with negative blog posts about their brand? The reality is that the social media sword cuts both ways.
Unfortunately the knock on effect is that negative news like the above often impacts other agencies, especially digital ones. I’ve seen brand managers get nervous when they see things like this in the news and subsequently make rapid judgement that the social medium is too volatile and uncontrollable. Budgets get withdrawn. We all start to lose – and that’s where I have a problem, because we know enough about social now to start doing things differently, and do it right.
What’s the solution? So here’s the thing – Fake Viral is completely possible, and without deception. There have been some great examples from the US. Here’s one from Coors:
Here’s another ad for Coors, deliberately designed to breed consumer imitations (of which there are many). Great use of Social Object Theory:
Rolling Rock ran a hilarious campaign on Moonvertsing (here) which although potentially controversial produced a great digital response. Again completely Fake but with full disclosure from day one. I could go on, but it’s late and I think you get the picture right?
In Conclusion: There are better, bigger, broader opportunities to engage consumers using social media that can still be authentic, mysterious, realistic. Yes it’s a creative challenge but if we can start to get this right there are big wins for consumers, clients and agencies alike. Naked aren’t the first, and won’t be the last to feel the heat on this issue – but they’re a great agency and will rise above it. I do hope that in the future the industry will adopt some of Joe’s 7 digital brand genes, it’s a good place to start.
This week’s ‘best’ Facebook FunSpace virals have made me wonder if you ever really can pick, let alone create, a viral winner. Most of these top 10 videos are shocking. Peanut Butter Jelly Time (despite being a mash up of an old viral), the Teletubbies video and the music clips look like the only videos worth forwarding … at a stretch.
Surely we can do better than that. Send me links to any good virals you have received via Facebook lately to restore my faith in Facebook as a good channel for video distribution. Or better yet, send me a link to the worst viral you have received lately. Let’s see if we can top this list.
Burger King have launched their anticipated new online campaign, Whopper Virgins. Based on the idea that you can’t get an unbiased opinion in the western world because of media saturation, BK take to the world’s most remote communities to find people that have never eaten a hamburger or been exposed to advertising.
People in urban areas of countries such as Thailand, Romania and Greenland were asked to sit a taste test of the Whopper vs the Big Mac. No surprises with the results, but I was happy to see that it wasn’t a complete landslide.
The really interesting part was where they break out the portable Burger King grill and go out to make Whoppers for people that live in really remote places. The reactions are great, particularly the guy that says he still prefers seal meat.
I’m sure that this is what Rick Astley had in mind, all those years ago, when he recorded the most annoying song in the history of songs which would then turn into the most annoying internet prank of all time…on a float with a bunch of second-rate muppets.
Dove is reknown for its amazing commercials about bringing real womens issues to life. And once again they did with the following commercial.
As always a showstopping commercial – however there was a retaliation commercial brought to life by Green peace which powered the issue that – yes Dove are about womens beauty esteem but at what environmental cost? – please watch to understand
The great result of this campaign was that Dove RESPONDED to the call and joined Greenpeace in the fight to stop the destuction of the Paradise Forests. Greenpeace campaigners will work with Unilever for the next six months (starting May 2008) to bring together a major coalition of companies to make the moratorium a reality.
If Greenpeace then see a change they will stiop the onslaught.
The names have been changed – but here us the infamous Facebook email of someone being busted pulling a sickie – we may have a new internet star in the making… Good luck KD 🙂
UPDATE 6.15pm Oct 23:
1. Comments saying it’s fake. We looked into this yesterday. KD is a real person. Source of email has not been verified. Suspicion around the am pm dates not being capitalised. 2. People unhappy we changed the names but we’re really just reporting the viral phenomenon – not the people involved (update… the actual name is now in the header seeing as other people have published it). 3. Australian published an article (here) 4. The Facebook profile is there but no longer public (as of 5pmOct 23) 5. SMH (here) Ninemsn (here) 6. Friends bombarded his wall with feedback during the day (see some of this below). Many of KDs friends were contacted by the media asking for his mobile # requesting interviews. 7. The mail seemed to “go viral” around midday on Oct 22, despite the email contents being dated Aug 27th.
That facebook profile – it appears completely genuine to us.
From: John Smith Sent: Wednesday, 27 August 2008 9:35 a.m. To: Karl Dowell Subject: Absence on Thursday 21st 2008 Hi Karl, Please provide a medical certificate stating a valid reason for your sick leave on Thursday 21st 2008. Thank You JOHN SMITH Real Time Manager
From: Karl Dowell Sent: Wednesday, 27 August 2008 9:38 a.m. To: John Smith Subject: RE: Absence on Thursday 21st 2008 Niresh, 1 day leave absences do not require a medical certificate as stated in my contract, provided I have stated that I am on leave for medical reasons. Thanks Regards, Karl Dowell Resolutions Expert – Technical
From: John Smith Sent: Wednesday, 27 August 2008 9:39 a.m. To: Karl Dowell Subject: RE: Absence on Thursday 21st 2008 Hi Karl, Usually that is the case, as per your contract. However please note that leave during these occasions is only granted for genuine medical reasons. You line manager has determined that your leave was not due to medical reasons and as such we cannot grant leave on this occasion.
JOHN SMITH Real Time Manager
From: Karl Dowell Sent: Wednesday, 27 August 2008 9:43 a.m. To: John Smith Subject: RE: Absence on Thursday 21st 2008
Hi Niresh, My leave was due to medical reasons, so you cannot deny leave based on a line manager’s discretion, with no proof, please process leave as requested. Thanks Regards, Karl Dowell Resolutions Expert – Technical
From: John Smith Sent: Wednesday, 27 August 2008 9:50 a.m. To: Karl Dowell Subject: RE: Absence on Thursday 21st 2008 Hi Karl, I believe the proof that you are after is below JOHN SMITH Real Time Manager, ____
From: Karl Dowell Sent: Wednesday, 27 August 2008 9:55 a.m. To: John Smith Subject: RE: Absence on Thursday 21st 2008
HAHAHA LMAO epic fail No worries man Regards, Karl Dowell Resolutions Expert – Technical
Below: Snapshot of Chatter on KD’s wall before it was made non-public…
As part of a monthly round up of Viral Game releases around the world (good, bad and utterly unplayable) here’s our digest of BRAND NEW releases within the past 30 days – compiled by Amnesia. If you would like to include your game in the next roundup let me know via twitter (here).
Amnesia gets a nice mention in today’s Sydney Morning Herald (SMH) technology page. A front page story about how the Downfall clip is being mashed up and repurposed.
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