Viral Intelligence: Christmas Edition
Over the festive period, there are a few things that are constant: growing waistlines, *boilk* hangovers and ElfYourself videos. We'll take a look at December's best virals and some industry news and that.
Quick Links
News Round-up:
Viral semanticism: "it ain't viral til it is"
Kudos to Faris Yakob, BL Ochman and That Canadian Girl for again highlighting why we should all be careful about our use of the term 'viral' and why it should be considered a verb.
Faris explains:
"Sometimes I get calls saying this viral isn't performing very well - what's the problem? We've seeded it to all the right places, it's on youtube and everything - where's our traffic? The problem is usually that they've made an ad that contains nothing people consider worth showing to their friends.
Unless you would be willing to send whatever it is to your mates - it's not viral!
But saying something is viral, we focus entirely on the content itself and not on the needs of the people that we are asking to spread ideas."
The problematic terming of 'viral' may precipitate particular inverted comma abuse. This usually occurs with cautionary coinage.
My favourite quote on this topic comes from Douglas Rushkoff:
"People don't engage with each other to engage viruses; people
exchange viruses as an excuse to engage with each other."
Perhaps some of us might be excused for ElfingOurselves this Xmas.
Adam AN
Gladwell's success by numbers
In the introduction to his talk last night (attended by the TeamRubber-London-Office), Malcolm Gladwell self-depricatingly announced that he hadn't given his talk a specific title. Usually, he said, he'd come up with some obscure title for his talks involving Freud - for example "Freuds's geology" - or put three random words together - for example "Elephant, Ice Cream, Jesus". The idea being that the more obscure the title, the more interesting the talk, therefore the bigger the pull. The crowd tittered at this thought, however these introductory words for me proved the most interesting of his whole talk.
I'll admit that I've never been a massive fan of Gladwell's. I think he's clever and I admire him for bringing the genre of popular social science to the masses, however each of his books seems to grate more and more.
The reason for this is that Gladwell comes across to me a as a bit of a one trick formulaic social science pony, who takes a simple central concept and then surrounds it by obscure anecdotes to make the concept sound a lot more interesting and important than it is. And the formula is roughly this:
1) Pick an "of the moment" concept that's been bubbling away in the back of public consciousness, but hasn't yet been articulated well enough for the public to "get it". N.B. this concept will generally be pretty obvious. Obvious enough to result in people going "Oh, I seeeeee!" once they'd read Gladwell's book.
2) Give the concept a catchy title / name (e.g. Tipping Point, Blink . . .) N.B. these are often existing names of concepts.
3) Explain the concept by using a varied number obscure real life examples / anecdotes to bring the concept to life, and flesh out the book so it's over 150 pages long and therefore merits being called a book and worth over £8 (paperback) or £15 (hardback).
4) Send the book to the Daily Mail to get previewed to ensure a gushingly positive review involving the words "inspiring" "genius" and "genre defining".
So, by being partly lost for something interesting to say to introduce his talk Gladwell made a Freudian-slip and revealed his inner-self - a self that's undoubtedly clever, but also hell-bent on making sure everyone knows he's clever. That's of course not a bad thing. Especially when the end product is as entertaining as his books, and he (and his formula) is such a Success.
Got an opinion? Email Chris Q @ Chris@rubberrepublic.com
Drug mule dogs and speaking baggies
FRANK, the drugs information and advice service, has launched a campaign raising awareness about the risks of cocaine use with a bang.
This year a fully integrated on & offline campaign incorporates a whole host of digital content, featuring videos narrated by, amongst others, a fatally wounded drug mule dog called Pablo and a talking bag of cocaine.
Our team's been tasked with distributing this online content to drive high-levels of awareness across the net amongst FRANK's target for this campaign of 15 to 18 year olds.
In total there are four pieces of content to seed: two specially commissioned online clips - a cryptic teaser and a viral - which complement the TV spot and another film highlighting the darker side of cocaine.
We've gone for a two stage strategy. We kicked the campaign off earlier this week with an exclusive pre-launch preview of the teaser and viral films to a discrete audience of culturally relevant bloggers (e.g. DJ / music blogs), and then yesterday, as the full campaign officially launched, we pushed the button on a blanket seeding strategy intended to generate high-levels of awareness quickly.
So far the strategy seems to be working with some good early advocacy for the campaign amongst the blogger community, and a good early surge in views of the campaign videos.
See the video here: Baggie
...and catch all the other pieces of content here: YouTube channel
IanO
YouTube orchestrates a symphony of marketing genius
A campaign that has just grabbed my attention is the YouTube Symphony Orchestra.
It certainly seems to have captured the imagination of the sites budding musicians, with over a million views to the explanatory video. It gives you the chance to be part of a huge interactive orchestra: downloading the sheet music to practice, uploading your recital of it, and then being in with a chance of playing in an orchestra made from the best submitters live at the Carnegie Hall.
This project is a collaboration between YouTube, the London Symphony Orchestra, the Carnegie Hall, conductor Michael Tilson Thomas, composer Tan Dun, and pianist Lang Lang, alongside many other classical music stars and leading institutions.
This is an interesting project as it shows people's acceptance of new media channels for communicating in the classical music world. This is also a very involving method of promoting the individuals and institutions involved. Encouraging the musicians to practice the piece so they can be involved in the final performance, will mean that they will be thinking of the campaign even when not directly watching the video. Their practice will also affect those in their close proximity creating an awareness of the campaign on a secondary level also, to people who may not have had any contact with the video.
Ally
Removing the new YouTube search box
YouTube added a new search box to the YouTube embedded player earlier this month.
Understandably, many people might want to remove this "feature" - so here's how:
(The YouTube api has been updated to mention this, so it appears to be a supported method)
1. In your embed code, find the url for the flash player (it is in there twice if you are using the standard YouTube embed code)
2. Add the parameter showsearch=0 (by adding "&showsearch=0" to the url)
3. There is no step three - the video shouldn't be showing the search box any more.
I'm sure some people will find that useful when they look at their blogs today
Tim W
5 of the best
During a financial crisis, it's of increased importance that Christmas virals strike a jovial cord. Whilst you may not be laughing your way to the bank, let's hope you're not crying yourself to the toilet...
Happy Christmas from AKQA
For everyone the message may be obvious but only for agency folk is the messenger clear. It is perhaps a concept they've long had in mind and could have easily been used for one of their brands but Jingle Bells is about as good as you're going to get with microwave dings. It provides a sweet denouement to the agencies year, enhancing both creative and friendly rep.
Google's Naughty Christmas Kid
Back in October, we saw a similar Obama broadcast remixed by CNNBC. Google's Christmas Channel 6 TV News broadcast isn't quite as witty but it's going viral amongst the kids it's targetting.
BBC's Breathing Places campaign
Cute animals are always a key ingredient of spreadable media so it's no surprise that having them lip-synching to a Christmas song is proving a success. Perhaps this one takes its creative cues from Aardman's Creature Comforts campaign. For http://www.bbc.co.uk/breathingplaces
For http://www.bbc.co.uk/breathingplaces
FSA: Diarrhoea!
The Food Standards Agency remind us about a Christmas gift that keeps on giving...whilst it's not a Christmas remix of 2girls1cupetc, it's fairing pretty well on YouTube.
Furoshiki Gift Wrapping
This is fab - how to wrap your presents in Furoshiki (cloth) to avoid using wrapping paper. Unlike wrapping paper (which usually can't be recycled) Furoshiki can be used again and again. The concept is more viral than the video but perhaps it only needs to show you what to do and point the way to become spreadable as media.
One of the worst: White House Barney Cam
We really can't stress how bad this is....it's dog awful.
The White House has released their annual skit showing how the pets of the president celebrate the holidays.
2,900 odd views suggest it's too late in the day for festive George Bush human-goo spin and tis the season for Change We Can Believe In. How about you wind down with some more Iraqi size 10 sandal dodging, Georgey boy? (now, that's a viral)
