4 Great Reverse Viral Commercials
There’s an infinite amount of parodies based on TV spots circulating on the web, and if you don’t believe me type in “Geico caveman” or “Apple” in YouTube’s search bar. I wanted to look at it from the other side though. I wanted to find examples of online viral making a full (reverse) loop and becoming a produced and directed spot. Basically, I wanted to run a litmus test of sorts to see if ad agencies were paying attention to, taking away from, and selling actual web culture.
This is a big step for a "traditional" agency if you think about it, because for starters it flips the creative equation. It’s not about 6 creatives in a room brainstorming a golden egg of an idea, it’s kind of like finding one that already exists and running with it. The trick is that creatives are very fond of their own golden eggs and finding just the right egg for a client may be tough.
That said, I think this spot is one of the most logical to mesh with young web culture and one of the best executed for the target. The client, AOL, launched this campaign based on not just one but 3 online personalities – Miss. Teen South Carolina, stop harassing Britney guy, and stop tazing me guy.
Within the all’s fair attitude of American politics it’s interesting to see candidates look to viral concepts in reaching out to the younger vote. This one plays on the uber popular online spoofing of Chuck Norris.
This spot is one of my favorites. It’s a Emperador chocolate bar commercial based on a video clip that was widely popular in Latin America of ‘Edgar falling’. It basically embodies what I was getting with this search.
Finally, I wanted to post this. While not a TV spot per-se, the new video, based on the now infamous Tom Cruise Scientology video currently making the rounds, was created to promote the site Funny or Die, a ‘tube’ like startup that has some heavy hitting comedic connections, including Will Farrel. You really should watch at least most of the original first to get the humor.
Naturally, some issues do arise out of taking this approach to advertising. The finished spot has to be incredibly well timed and quickly executed as viral videos or memes very rarely even reach their 15 minutes of fame.
The other issue and the one that I think may scare most clients, usually internet luddites in their late 40’s, is the fear that only a select young target into web culture will ‘get it’. But that’s actually why I wanted to put together this list, the above spots required not just the buy in from the agency creative/accounts team but also trust on the part of the client that even if they themselves didn’t ‘get it’, their target would.
This is a big step for a "traditional" agency if you think about it, because for starters it flips the creative equation. It’s not about 6 creatives in a room brainstorming a golden egg of an idea, it’s kind of like finding one that already exists and running with it. The trick is that creatives are very fond of their own golden eggs and finding just the right egg for a client may be tough.
That said, I think this spot is one of the most logical to mesh with young web culture and one of the best executed for the target. The client, AOL, launched this campaign based on not just one but 3 online personalities – Miss. Teen South Carolina, stop harassing Britney guy, and stop tazing me guy.
Within the all’s fair attitude of American politics it’s interesting to see candidates look to viral concepts in reaching out to the younger vote. This one plays on the uber popular online spoofing of Chuck Norris.
This spot is one of my favorites. It’s a Emperador chocolate bar commercial based on a video clip that was widely popular in Latin America of ‘Edgar falling’. It basically embodies what I was getting with this search.
Finally, I wanted to post this. While not a TV spot per-se, the new video, based on the now infamous Tom Cruise Scientology video currently making the rounds, was created to promote the site Funny or Die, a ‘tube’ like startup that has some heavy hitting comedic connections, including Will Farrel. You really should watch at least most of the original first to get the humor.
Naturally, some issues do arise out of taking this approach to advertising. The finished spot has to be incredibly well timed and quickly executed as viral videos or memes very rarely even reach their 15 minutes of fame.
The other issue and the one that I think may scare most clients, usually internet luddites in their late 40’s, is the fear that only a select young target into web culture will ‘get it’. But that’s actually why I wanted to put together this list, the above spots required not just the buy in from the agency creative/accounts team but also trust on the part of the client that even if they themselves didn’t ‘get it’, their target would.
Labels: matthew smoluch, spots, viral
posted by Matthew Smoluch at
12:53 PM
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