don't freak out

Is the VW Fun Theory campaign where it’s at? Yesterday I met a woman who works for the agency responsible for the campaign, and when I mentioned it her response was “Yes it’s an amazing campaign. Brilliant.” The view figures are certainly impressive, and no doubt it is being regarded as successful by all involved.

Over 6.5 million views is not to be sneezed at. It certainly shows the content of the video, and the story being told is engaging people and, more importantly, motivating them to pass it on. It ticks all the right boxes for viral success – authenticity/truth, joy , OMG factor and unobtrusive branding. So successful viral video, yes. Campaign? Perhaps.

Firstly, two weeks and three or four views in, I went to the companion website and discovered an accompanying campaign competition. The URL is in the video title, but that’s about it, and until recently the video text was only in Swedish. Other than that there didn’t seem to be much direction to the site. Once there, the website is slow to load, clunkily put together and not really offering anything outside the videos on the front page. Clearly most people are not engaging with it either, given that on thefuntheory.com website the paino stairs video has 16 comments, and on YouTube it has almost 2700. Either that or the videos on YouTube had failed to adequately alert/encourage them to the website.

The competition itself seems fairly il-defined. According to the site, the top 10 will be decided by a jury, and then put on “public display in Stockholm” which really could be anything, including arguably just leaving them on the website and doing nothing additional with them. Clearly the campaign and the competition had been conceived as something for the Swedish market only, and when the videos went viral and truly international, outside of translating the video and the website to English there appears to have been very little done to ‘cross the chasm‘. €2500 isn’t particularly international prize money and a display in Stockholm will also only have limited appeal.

It remains to be seen what people come up with as entries for the competition, but at the point of writing there was only 20 entries there. Further, the uploading and display system presents the ideas in a messy stack of images and video, with page architecture that seems to be falling apart (http://thefuntheory.com/?q=entries). No one is commenting here either, so it will be interesting to see if people begin to engage with this component of the campaign as time progresses and more entries go up, and if they fix the website.

More This American Life, this time from Season 2.

More good UGC in the vein of the Billy Mays video. I think what makes this video so successful as a viral is the clearly affectionate tone. There is joy and appreciation of Carl Sagan and his curious ways. The humour that is drawn from his idiosyncratic delivery and manerisms is born out of a kind of love that is so often lacking in youtube mashups. A delightfully true and somewhat entrancing homage.

This is a great little short from Chris Ware from Series 1 of This American Life. I don’t usually put TV up here, but its such a great example of short dramatic storytelling that could so easily be UGC, there is no need for network support to achieve it. Also there isn’t really much else out there like this and I want them to make more of them.

A great viral video that’s part of an online campaign for VW. I think it’s getting close to what effective online marketing/branding strategy can be. It is a story that exists outside of the brand involved, there’s no obtrusive product placement, and people watching it don’t feel sold to, or feel like they’re helping to sell something by passing it on, both very important factors in viral success. Most marketeers find it difficult to work with the truism that nobody in the blogosphere wants to help them sell anything. It is the realm of brand association which involves a certain amount of surrendering of control. Faking it just doesn’t cut it, whether its a simple vlog about a forgotten jacket or an elaborate hoax about a stolen racing car, bullshitting people is a ride on a bad media roller coaster – a brief rush and modicum of titillation followed by a nausea that will mean they never ride your stupid ride again. Ie: bad strategy. Thumbs up to VW.

One of the most interesting projects to come out of the technology in a long time. Its a mashup the likes of which has not seen before, both technologically and qualitatively.

Kutiman (and here) is an Israeli producer that has come up with something special in thruYOU. Relying purely on YouTube videos as samples for a wide variety of interesting and ultimately quite good music.