My take on the viral chart

I was checking out AdAge's viral chart and first off I must say I find it rather surprising that Vodafone's recent viral has done so well. I don't find them that compelling, and frankly their "voices" are very irritating...I just want to switch them off!



...really, is there anything that special about this series of virals? What it does have going for it is it's length - just long enough to tell a story without loosing interest.

Frito Lay's viral held my attention til the end - & this is obviously helped by my femininity as I am the target market for these clips.


One last observation is that being genuine works and we're wise to special effects making them - NOT funny, and when you're setting out to be entertaining via humour...you need to think again about treatment.

TMobile gets this.



Cadbury didn't



BUT (and this is a very big but) as regards creating buzz on the internet...in the form of various spoofs and takes, and viral "notoriety"...Cadbury's strategy is doing very well as you can see by the likes of this...



So when it comes to making virals, ideas that are bigger than the brands own execution and that inspire or provoke viral responses are a more effective way of generating buzz.

And by the way...Cadbury rocks with this piece of PR on the Saturday Night Project...(embedding was disabled but follow this link).

Striking the balence in viral branding

Spent my day doing the offline edit of my viral to promote Twestival Amsterdam (which I'll post soon), the conversations we had in the editing room got me to thinking about what makes a great viral and where that balence exists to engage people before revealing the brand...and making both elements work...

I think Greenpeace do an excellent job here in this piece, I was drawn in my this thoughtful piece of, what I call, "film-making" the reveal of Greenpeace was an "a-ha" moment that made the meaning of the viral even more poignant and did a supreme job for both the brand and the artistry/meaing of the film-making..