Digital Marketeer

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.