VT: March 9th, 2010

A round up of the weeks best virals including the new banned ad from Paddy Power gets an online airing, the excellent stop motion of Lego – The Force Unleashed, a short clip from an Oz based news show about the massive growth of Google into all areas of life including genetics and finally some jackass style stunts on a New Zealand golf course… to promote snowboarding obviously!

01. Paddy Power – Takeaway (Banned)

Paddy Power is an organisation who’s marketing is often the subject of controversy. The more the better as it all adds up to free column inches and tons of word of mouth. This is the new viral to promote their offers at next weeks Cheltenham Festival in the UK. The controversy this time centres around four wheelchair bound actors who ‘do a runner’ from a restaurant, prompting regulators to pull the ad from TV broadcast for fear of causing offence. I don’t know if cutting it close to the bone was the intention of the bookmaker giant in this case, but, what a score for Paddy Power. By banning the ad from TV regulators have pretty much ensured that mainstream media will report the story, giving it free publicity and almost guaranteeing this ad will go viral in the next week in the run up to Cheltenham as it can be viewed freely online.

02. Lego – The Force Unleashed

This is another Lego stop motion short films, its an entrant to a competition on BricksInMotion.com – a site dedicated to the use of stop motion and plastic bricks. This entrant is for the ‘coolest lightsaber duel possible’ competition. The last time I featured a Lego stop motion film was The Matrix  at the very start of December. That viral has gone on to be seen over 1.6 million times since then. Between users such as The Foce Unleashed’s creator ‘xxxfancypantsxxx’ (here’s his Youtube Channel), BricksinMotion.com and Lego themselves releasing these amazing shorts the brand always has an air of vitality about it. Although the real ingenuity goes into how the product is used in the short films, Lego always had that creative side where creating your own world was part of the enjoyment. These shorts bring that to another level. They lend what is essentially a childrens toy a level of kudos, flair and a certain ‘wow’ factor. No doubt setting fans minds alight with ideas and scenarios that can be tried by anybody with a camera and a connection to the internet. While a lot of the user generated content (UGC) competitions often feel laboured and used merely as a means to generate publicity for brands, these shorts for and by Lego don’t. They’re made by real fans of the product who show a level of dedication that goes way and beyond simple 2 minute clips of randomers on the internet that often passes as UGC.

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03 – Google Corner: Hungry Beast

This is a clip from an Australian TV show which aired a clip on just how massive a company Google is. Some of it is a little frightening given the extent of their business interests, which they claim is purely for advertising.

04. Torpedo7.com

A now something a little lighter… Remember Jackass, then there was that Welsh version on MTV UK which just lacked any of the coolness Johnny Knoxville and co. had? Well here’s a viral that takes the same extreme attitude of those shows to promote a New Zealand based online store that is now selling snowboarding equipment. After a plethora of virals with high production values this is very old school, low production values, done on the fly, possibly without permission. Although it’s more than likely a fake.