Creative youtube campaign for Tipp-Ex

This must’ve been a lot of dollars pumped into google’s account by Tipp-Ex but the production quality and the viral potential are one of the biggest youtube can give you. Mainly because it uses one big flash made by the advertiser to just play some videos inside it. This is I think the first time youtube went in that direction and even though there’s a bottom line here that it’s still just a clever commercial, it’s worth checking out.

And you can do that here

There were campaigns similar to that one before of course, but not on that level of complication. For example the show “Dexter” had a campaign in which every youtube clip had hot spots on it to click, and there was a crowd moving within which you had to spot the main character and click on him. If you did you were redirected to another movie and so on. But that was done using just the typical youtube API so it probably wasn’t as popular as this new thing will be.

The main reason for success here is being surprised – when the hunter reaches outside of the movie you know you’ve been tricked but still you want to go forward. (that’s not much of a spoiler so don’t get upset about it ;p) There’s still plenty of room for innovation in online advertising and thankfully every once in a while we see that someone has come up with a fresh idea. Sure this one can’t be done with just a few bucks in your pocket like the “Jumping into jeans” or “Coke and Mentos” memes but it has more of that “I’m gonna send it to all my friends” action attached to it. And that’s precisely how a good viral works.

Know any other good examples of creative (meaning different than just a video) youtube campaigns ?

Youtube is 5 years old!

youtubetimeline

5 years. And yet it seems it had been there forever, right? Well apparently 5 years ago if you wanted to watch an online video you had to download a crappy MPG file or wait for those quicktimes to stream. And then along came two guys and their garage, and they changed the web forever. Without them we wouldn’t have the amazed lemur, the skateboarding dog, the laughing baby and many other classics of web 2.0 entertainment. Happy birthday Youtube! Too see (among other things) the Youtube timeline click on the number 5 next to their logo.

Viral video timeline

viral-timeline

I’ve been thinking about the steps of the viral video before it reaches the final one of being viral and here’s what I came up with. This list is based on the observation I had with a few of my own videos that went viral and after making a few viral websites too.

1. Content

As usual it all starts with the content. It has to have a viral hook, which is something like a hook in a song – a catchy part that will get people “hooked”. So if you’re planning to go viral with a video it has to have at least one moment that others will want to share. It can be a funny moment, a scary one or just plain out of the ordinary. Take note that if you’re making a video about for example skateboarding, it’s rarely enough to be just good at it. If you’re good you will only reach a small niche. So there has to be something else for other people to want to watch your video. In such a case – a not-so-nice conversation with a cop, running away from cops, falling down, whatever. But remember it has to be addictive. It needs to be interesting enough not only for the viewer to send it out but also for the viewer to want to watch it again. Oh and as said before it’s best if it was around a minute in length.

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Cool idea – youtube doubler mashup

ytd
A pretty cool idea for mashing up youtube clips for some stunning results. Ideas can include adding spoken-word videos to instrumental music videos (dance music anyone?) and many, many others.
It’s clear that simple ideas are a great thing, and it’s odd that it took so long to create something like that. Thumbs up.
You can see it at : http://www.youtubedoubler.com/