Digital Marketeer

For this week best viral I´ve picked FC Barcelona Motivation Video

This same video was presented to Barcelona players before to jump in to the UEFA Champions League 2009 Final in Rome. Barcelona was playing vs Manchester United, in case your not a big soccer fan this is the best tournament of the year, its played between the best European teams and the winner becomes Europe Champion, so you can see the importance of this game.

What i like:

• As you can see the video is edited with soccer plays and scenes of Gladiator movie, this couldn´t  be more inspiring because the final was played in Rome.
• The main idea of all Barcelona’s Fans be able to see and experience the 6 minutes before the game just like their favorite stars did its awesome.
• We always wonder what happens in the looker room before any game of any sport so this also is an inside look to what players lived.

Some Numbers:

• In three main versions on youtube has 1,240,004 views
• The first video was released June 01, 2009

I don’t think this video was intended to be a viral but I understand how the Bracelonas marketing or executive team decide to release it, an amazing gift to all the fans.

Check out the latest Carl´s Junior viral video….

I´m not sure if I liked it, I rather viral videos that are not in your face branded and mainly because we´ve seen the same idea before, this was made by Nike about a year ago in a viral where Kobe Bryant jumps an Aston Martin this video has 2,346,461 views and was uploaded April 10, 2008

But ok I think there is one thing we can say about Carl´s viral video i has gone fully viral in three days; with 247,238 views it was uploaded June 03, 2009.

All this noise comes with the new “viral Strategy” forms Carl´s Junior where they invite all the YouTube Stars to demonstrate how they eat their Portobello Mushroom Six Dollar Burger, nor sure if i liked the hole campaing but at the end of the day they are making a lot of buzz on YouTube.

You can check all the  YouTube Stars videos on Carl´s Junior Channel

We´ve seen the guys from Improve Everywhere froze grand central in the Frozen Grand Central Mission and go viral with more than 17 million views since January 08 they also ride the subway with 2,500 people in 22 cities around the world without pants in the No Pants Subway Ride 2009 Mission and again go wide viral with almost 8 million views since January 09. Amazing actions that represents the shift of how people participate interact and most important: how they organize via social networks sites.

My favorite campaign so far for 09 without a question is T-mobiles “life´s for Sharing” developed by Saatchi & Saatchi London, the strategy and channel integration is perfect.

The T-Mobile Dance at Liverpool Street Station

T-Mobile Sing-along Trafalgar Square

Did you liked it… Let’s give it a quick review:

The concept:

• “life is for sharing” with your friends and family by calling them and sharing anything you want.

The Channels:

• BTL: An amazing public event where everybody is invited to share by dancing and singing
• ATL: I didn´t find any TV Spots or print ads but I´m sure there´s got to be something there
• PR: I´m sure that this actions where cover by a lot of news programs, newspapers and magazines and when you have celebrities invited the reaction increases, Pink share and sing with all people in Trafalgar Square.
• Viral: The sing a long video has almost 600,000 views since May 02,2009 and T-mobile Dance 12 million views since Jan 16,2009
• Social Media: Facebook, twitter, Blogs, YouTube people creating content around this events, just make a quick search and you will see what I´m talking about.

T-mobile has built an audience through different places, e-mails, mobiles, fans in facebook, followers in twitter, but what happened when you have thousands or millions of people following your brand? The answer is simple: You need to start creating “Social Actions” or anything you want to activate them by giving them something interesting to do; otherwise they will left or forget you.

The first viral branded video I remember is Ronaldinho: Touch of Gold that was uploaded on October 20, 2005 just 5 months after the first video was uploaded to the site on April 23, 2005, and shows founder Jawed Karim at San Diego Zoo.

All this seems like a lifetime but was only 5 years ago and since then YouTube has reinvented the way people watch and share videos online and how brands communicate with their audiences.

In this five years we´ve seen a lot of viral branded videos, really good examples of how companies are using video sharing sites to post virals and let users to distribute their content with friends exploiting all the channels and principles of social media.

Going back to Samsungs viral this is one of my favorites the concept and the strategy couldn´t be better. The video shows a “magic trick” recorded with the new Samsung i8910 Omnia HD and then challenge the viewers to guess how they did it? They assure us that the video was recorded in one shot and no post production or special effects were used. As hint to catch more details they strongly suggest watch the video in HD, this is the perfect pretext to appreciate how the phone record in high definition.

What´s the best of this video?

1. Simple: Not an extremely expensive production just a great idea.
2. Surprise: When you see that the phone is gone, you can´t believe there is no post production edition, what makes you see it over and over again and turn the HD mode on.
3. Activate: They invite all the viewers to try to discover the trick creating a social object that let users be part of the conversation.
4. Shareable: What better pretext to send it to a friend and see if maybe he can find out how they did it, then make some buzz and post your answer in the YouTube video page as a text comment or video response.

The video has more than one million views and two thousand text comments in just a month a half that has been online.

Samsung is going full speed with viral strategies this is just one of the recent videos that has been released by the company, With this success I´m sure we will be seeing more and better viral videos from them.

In case you haven’t figured it out, here is the trick reveled by Samsung giving the strategy a second boost.

The viral actions that let users upload self images or friends edit or customize them are always a good way to viralize an action an making users to send the brands message, we´ve seen some successful cases like “Elf Yourself” by OfficeMax, one of the first big branded actions of this kind, according to adage the site received 36 million hits and increased OfficeMax traffic by 20%. Those are pretty good numbers for a “not expensive” online action.

Since Elf Yourself we´ve seen a lot of similar actions and besides simpsonizeme I can´t remember one as successful as this two cases.

So what was the key of the success?

1. Relevancy – The site is only online during holyday season, it’s the perfect timing.
2. Customizability– You can personalize the hole postcard with friends or family.
3. Jokeable – You can tease your friends by uploading their photos and send it to them, I think this is the main “viral factor”.
4. Unique – back in 06 there was no other place where you can turn your friends in to elfs.

A case online right now is the new site launched by the WB for the upcoming movie “Terminator Salvation” by the concept “terminate yourself” here you can convert you into a futuristic robot with the face all smash up. I just try it and honestly I was hoping to see something really amazing but the action is really basic, upload a photo edit it and you are done. One good thing about it is the integration with social networks but these days have this sharing option it’s a commodity.

One great site and maybe one of the most interactive I’ve seen is the “brainfreeze laboratory” by Slurpee. It has a solid concept relevant to the brand, 100% customizable, jokeable and unique because you mainly get brain freezes with a good cold Slurpee.

How does it works?  After you upload your photo you can give yourself or a friend a good brain freeze that plays a different and funny animation for each flavor available.