VT: Paddy Power Banned, Lego Force Unleashed, Hungry Beast, Torpedo7.com

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!

VT: Ok Go, Skoda, State of the Internet, Mercedes, IamAmIWhoAmI, Improv Everywhere

VT: Tuesday March 2nd, 2010 – The weeks best new virals:
1. Ok Go ‘This Too Shall Pass’
The new Ok Go video is on Youtube and its possible to embed! Last week I wrote about how EMI had signed a deal with the video sharing site that disabled the embed function. It would seem after the [...]

EMI’s Anti Viral Marketing Strategy

There’s a few basic rules in viral marketing that must be adhered to in order for the viral effect to work. They are; make it worthwhile (in other words why would people share it?) and make it as easy to share as possible. On the downside creating a viral hit is more than just two steps, it’s far from easy, on the upside once you have one it can become a very important tool in the marketing arsenal, something which can live on beyond it’s intended lifespan thanks to the likes of Youtube. This kind of marketing depends on people to ‘share it’ therefore there is no additional costs to the ‘owner’ outside of production costs making it highly effective, and incredibly difficult to pull off. So what do you do when you have a viral hit that after 4 years has clocked up over 50 million views and still gets 10,000 views per day?

VT: Puma, Audi V BMW, Artschool Clip, Youtube & Google Corner

VT: Tuesday Feb 23rd, 2010. The best of the week in virals featuring Puma, Audi, BMW, the Art school project that went viral, the first ever Youtube clip and Google Corner

15 IKEA Marketing Examples

Furniture marketing, by and large hasn’t really developed in any major way for as long as I can remember. However, there is one exception and that is Ikea.

The world of furniture marketing is a pretty conservative. Ad’s will usually appear in print or on TV where the furniture can be shown, usually with price and more than likely people enjoying said furniture in immaculately decorated surroundings. Now don’t get me wrong Ikea produce their own catalogue which fulfils all these furniture marketing stereotypes, but they do like to mix things up with guerrilla and ambient techniques and late last year saw a very clever yet simple social media promotion. Even when Ikea do TV ad’s they still like to throw in a twist that gets people talking about the brand. All of their more edgy marketing has one thing in common, it’s aimed at bringing their brochure to life. For more click through

Guerrilla, Ambient & Viral Movie Marketing Pt 2: 2001 – 2006

In Part 1 I looked at the marketing campaign behind The Blair Witch Project that helped in making the film one of the most profitable ever made. Part 2 covers films released between 2001 and 2006, it’s by no means definitive so if you have any suggestions on entries I have missed please feel free to leave them below. The ratings are based solely on my opinion of the viral, guerrilla, ambient techniques used by films and are totally subjective. This post looks at Artificial Intelligence, 28 Days Later, Godsend, Superman Returns and Snakes on a Plane

VT: Google Parisian Love, IPad Keynote, Palin, Nexus One, Vancouver

VT: Viral Tuesday, the good, the bad and the not so ugly in virals every Tuesday since Dec 2009.
1. Google Parisian Love
This is an incredibly simple advert for Google Search that debuted back in November. it was also screened during the Superbowl last Sunday, and since then it’s online popularity has exploded pushing it into [...]

VT: Nike, Ask Social Media, Pepsi, Apple, Google, Digg

VT: The lowdown on the top (mostly) marketing related virals every Tuesday:
1. Nike Hit The Target
Featuring Wayne Rooney, a clever viral that reinforces just how good the new Nike football boot is.

2. Ask Social Media
I don’t like posting ad’s of brands that are unknown here in Ireland. However I thought the message of this was [...]

Listening Without Prejudice: IamWhoIam

In last weeks Viral Tuesday I featured the latest video from IamWhoIam. The virals originated from Sony and were initially distributed to music blogs and are believed to be part of a marketing campaign to promote an upcoming album. But the most interesting part is that the virals are not attributed to any artist. This has lead to wild speculation online that it could be anyone from Christina Aquiera to The Knife, Lady Gaga, Goldfrapp or even Trent Reznor and Nine Inch Nails. Thats a wide palate of diverse musical backgrounds.

Guerrilla, Ambient & Viral Movie Marketing Pt 1: Blair Witch Project

I was intrigued to read recently that District 9 and Paranormal Activity were amongst the most profitable films of 2009. However, while last year broke box office records, mainly due to increased ticket prices it was also a bumper year for flops with ‘toxic buzz’, when word of mouth spreads bad reviews, being blamed for poor returns on high profile films such as The Box, State Of Play, Duplicity and even Bruno. 2009 was also a year that even the mighty Steven Spielberg and his Dreamworks studio had difficulty in securing financing. But amongst all this bad news a few films performed particularly well and, according to some the success of District 9 and Paranormal Activity was due to their clever use of marketing especially their use of viral, guerrilla and ambient techniques. However such techniques to connect with audiences in unusual ways have been around since the 1990’s. The first, and argueable most successful to do so was The Blair Witch Project, a small inide flick from 1999 that went on to earn revenues 10,000 times greater than what the initial shoot cost. In this first post I will look at the success of the Blair Witch Project and in subsequent posts show how it has influenced film marketing since.