Don’t look now, but Reebok really wants your attention.

Rumors are flying that the sneaker company planted two viral videos now circulating on the Internet showing famous athletes exercising naked. Well, almost naked.

They do appear to be wearing (you guessed it) Reebok sneakers.

The first video shows extreme fighter Chuck Lidell, in his birthday suit, doing pull ups while his nude girlfriend Heidi Northcott keeps a steady pace on a step machine.

The second video features a naked Chad Ochocicno, the all-pro receiver for the Cincinnati Bengals football team running — should we say bouncing? — naked through the woods and stopping occasionally to stretch his lanky limbs. Ochocinco was recently named as a new contestant on ABC’s “Dancing With the Stars.”

Companies Pay Big Bucks for ‘Faux Virals’

While the videos look as if they were caught by a lucky snoop, the reflective Reebook logos that flash through all the videos leaves no doubt in the minds of many advertising experts that Reebok was behind the spots. Reebok did not return calls seeking comment.

“Faux virals are created to look like a regular person shot it,” says Josh Warner, founder and president of Feed Company, which specializes in helping companies seed viral videos. “Even though this video is not heavily branded like a commercial, the intrigue is such that Reebok is what everybody is talking about.”

Companies have been making viral videos for years, as a way to reach online audiences who don’t pay attention to traditional ads. You Tube has made it easier than ever to distribute these videos, but it has also intensified competition so that companies must dig deeper for tricks into their bag of attention-grabbing tricks.

When videos catch on, they can boost a company’s image and sales far more than a traditional advertising campaign would, experts say. And they cost very little do produce and distribute, since posting videos on You Tube is free.

One of the most popular viral marketing campaigns started out with a $50 budget. It shows a lab engineer in geeky glasses and a goofy smile cheerily using a blender to mash up everything from golf balls to iPhones.

Sticking Glow Sticks Into Blenders

The engineer was Tom Dickson, CEO Of Orem, Utah-based Blendtec, which has been making heavy-duty kitchen blenders for 23 years. Since starting the “Will it Blend?” series in 2006 Blendtec has seen sales of the featured blenders jump five-fold.

“Social media gives you a way to communicate directly to the consumer without them filtering things out,” says Blendtec marketing director Jeff Robe, estimating that Blendtec’s hundreds of videos have been viewed 5 million times around the world. “They have opted into this communication.”

Or, as one of Blendtec’s YouTube fans put it: “LOL!!”

Here are some other wildly popular viral marketing campaigns:

‘Numa Numa Guy’ Goes Geico

Remember the pudgy guy dancing along to a Numa Numa song in front of his computer? Well, insurance giant Geico ended up offering him a sponsorship, and how you can see him dancing to “Someone is Watching Me” doing a similar dance. The tell-tale sign that it’s viral marketing: the Geico gecko in the background.

Guys Catch Laptops with their Butts.

It’s silly, and a just a little gross. Meant as a parody of a similar spot showing guys catching Ray-Bans with their face, this one shows three sporty geeks catching MSI laptops with their bottoms. The idea, of course, is that the laptop is so thin and light you could squeeze it between your….ah, you get the idea.

Matt Harding, who calls himself a “32-year-old deadbeat from Connecticut” first posted a video of himself doing a goofy dance while on a trip around Asia. Several years later, the video went viral, and Stride Gum offered to sponsor another trip for him. The final version, dubbed “Where the Hell is Matt” registered more than 27 million views on You Tube.

Originally posted on ABCnews.com

Josh Warner is president and founder of Feed Company, which promotes and distributes brand videos, including campaigns such as Levi’s “Backflip,” Ray-Ban’s “Catch” and Activision’s “Bike Hero.” In three years, Feed has seeded more than 100 videos across the social web.

2009’s crop of top viral video advertisements show us that people are willing to embrace a host of creative approaches on the social video Web, from beguiling mini-films, to user-generated advocacy, to YouTube (YouTube) celebrity endorsers, to elaborate commercial-grade productions. That’s good news for creators.

Regardless of the approach, the key for marketers is a solid understanding of what a brand is, who is the brand’s audience, and what moves them. Strangely enough, this formula sounds like traditional advertising. This year’s Top 10 is certainly a glimpse of how the viral video ad business is evolving, and as marketers, what we can learn from that evolution.

1. Inspired Bicycles

Advertiser: Inspired Bicycles
Ad Agency: N/A

Why it works: Inspired Bicycles’ team rider Danny MacAskill scales fences in and around Edinburgh, Scotland. The video is as mesmerizing as its hypnotic soundtrack from music group Band of Horses. It’s a solid example of how a brand pursuing a niche market – mountain bike trailblazers – can reach the masses with a brilliant viral video execution.

2. Signs

Advertiser: Schweppes
Ad Agency: Publicis Mojo and @RadicalMedia

Why it works: A love story with few words, Signs compels you to watch until its poignant end. It conclusively dispels the myth that viral video executions must be short and gimmicky to grab your attention.

3. Piano Stairs

Advertiser: Volkswagen
Ad Agency: DDB Stockholm

Why it works: “Take the stairs instead of the escalator and feel better” is something we hear but didn’t often see until this sly video from Volkswagen appeared on the Web. It’s part of an inspiring campaign, The Fun Theory, that encourages people to come up with fun ways to “do good.” The video itself did well indeed, imbuing Volkswagen with a fun new ethos and racking up millions of views in the process.

4. BooneOakly.com

Advertiser: Boone Oakley
Ad Agency: Boone Oakley

Why it works: Boone Oakley, an ad agency from Charlotte, North Carolina, uses an interactive YouTube video to tell its story and showcase client work. Audacious and attention-getting, it puts the young company on the short list of ad agencies who get it.

5. Hosting Your Party

Advertiser: Microsoft
Ad Agency: N/A

Why it works: This is the ultimate anti-viral: a video that generates millions of views simply because of how profoundly it misses the mark. Comments have been disabled, but all you have to do is talk to someone you know who’s watched it to know why it was so generously passed around.

6. YouTube HD Camera Trick Challenge

Advertiser: Samsung
Ad Agency: Viral Factory

Why it works: One cunning way to get people talking about and sharing your video is to make them wonder how you shot it in the first place. Samsung went to great lengths to protect the “trick” in the video for their new HD camera phone, which got tech geeks riled up to try solving the puzzle. Geeks happen to be the audience most likely to buy the HD new camera phone, which is why this video makes our Top 10.

7. United Breaks Guitars

Advertiser: Dave Carroll
Ad Agency: N/A

Why it works: A traumatic experience for one flyer becomes a public relations disaster for United Airlines, when musician Dave Carroll uses a YouTube video to vent frustrations after his guitar is damaged at Chicago O’Hare airport. The takeaway: Viral video is a wonderful tool for consumer advocacy because chances are you’re not the only one who is upset. In this case, United was inundated with additional complaints after United Breaks Guitars.

8. All The Single Babies

Advertiser: singlebabies.com
Ad Agency: User Generated

Why it works: The huge popularity of this video, a baby dancing to a Beyonce (beyonce) song, is channeling ad revenue and donations into his college fund. This quick reaction to a YouTube hit shows us the toddler’s dad has moves of his own — something sluggish advertisers can learn from.

9. Guy Catches Laptop With His Butt

Advertiser: MSI Computers
Ad Agency: N/A

Why it works: In much the way Airplane parodies disaster films, this cheeseball video spoofs last year’s viral video hit Ray-Ban’s Guy Catches Glasses with Face. The inside joke is why we picked the video for this year’s Top 10. If you’re not on the web, you don’t get it. But for the millions who saw Ray-Ban’s video, it’s a wink and a nod, and an ironic sign that the viral video medium is maturing (or not).

10. JK Wedding Dance

Advertiser: Jill Peterson and Kevin Heinz
Ad Agency: N/A

Why it works: A couple’s wedding entourage dances down the aisle to Chris Brown’s (chris brown) song “Forever,” springboarding this video into viral history (at least for ‘09). Instead of stripping the video of its music — something copyright owners are permitted to do on YouTube — Sony used its popularity to sell more Chris Brown albums.

by Josh Warner

Recently Tim Williams, founder of Ignition, in an otherwise spot-on AdAge blog post, asked, “How much does it cost to reach a million people on YouTube?” Tim’s answer: $0.

YouTube ad sales will disagree with Tim and so do I.

To reach a million people on any social network, including (or, I should say, especially) YouTube, takes time, money and a huge dollop of creativity and planning. I imagine Tim is being dramatic to make a point: spend more money on creative and your media costs will be lower because more people share good creative on social networks.

True, but dropping even good creative into a social network and not supporting it with an adequate marketing budget is exactly what you shouldn’t do. In fact, one of the best times to put more marketing weight behind creative is when it’s good. Your media planner will tell you that, so why is it different for creative made to be shared on social networks?

I think the answer has a lot to do with how agencies sell through brand creative targeted to users on social networks, such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. The easiest pitch for the agency to make — especially to marketers on the early side of the social media learning curve — is to focus on the potential virality of the creative. Whether it’s a brand application or video that’s less of an ad pitch and more a useful tool or fun piece of content, the pitch to the advertiser is often the same: this creative is so good it will be shared by millions. It’s only natural for the marketer to say, “Great, then I don’t have to spend as much to support it.”

It’s ironic the most attractive promise of socially-targeted creative — it will be passed around, I know it will — is one of the biggest impediments to its success. Creative agencies and media buying firms are hobbled out of the gate with low budgets and high client-side expectations that are passed on, often painfully, to social-marketing firms that often work for them. The end result: No one wins, including our increasingly social industry.

What do you think? Please share your comments.

On Tuesday, we wrote about the return of Elf Yourself. OfficeMax has been sponsoring Elf Yourself for the last four years and its an early example of successful, web-based viral campaigns.

OfficeMax decided to get really meta with the Elf Yourself campaign by creating a flashmob in New York City. On November 3 in Union Square, OfficeMax hired several hundred performers to assemble — dressed in elfin gear — and do synchronized choreography for a crowd of delighted and confused passerbys.

Consider this Elf Yourself IRL (in real life):

What do you think of creating a viral campaign for a viral campaign? Is it meta-overload or does the existence of real-life Elf Yourself flash mob bring you holiday cheer? Let us know!

by Curtis Silver

I never thought I’d see the day that there would be a rock opera – about milk. Yet, here is that day. Coming soon to a computer screen near you, brought to you by the folks at “Got Milk” and starring a dude named White Gold (wielding a milk filled electric guitar no less) I present the new rock opera Battle for Milkquarious!

“The most amazing rock opera ever made – about milk.”

I’m completely serious.

Check out the trailer here. If you want to have your mind exploded by White Gold, check out his awesome website. It’s very milk-centric.

If you’ve never heard of White Gold, he’s the marketing creation of California Milk Processor Board and ad agency Goodby Silverstein & Partners San Francisco – who together brought us the infamous “Got Milk” campaign. He’s a bit over the top, sports white spandex and simply loves milk.

This isn’t all for naught, the Got Milk people have a goal in producing a milk themed rock opera. This is part of $50,000 scholarship for the arts for the California Public Highschool art programs. Nothing is being given away for free however. There is going to be a contest in which entrants (students) will enter by creating their own video spoof of the White Gold Rock Opera and uploading it. More details on the exact rules and where to upload are coming next week, so stay tuned to GeekDad for that.

The prizes will be a $20K scholarship for first place, one $10K winner for second place and 8 honorable mentions at $2.5K each!

What? That’s not enough to whet your appetite? You can’t wait until the official internet release date of October 5th for more details on the rock opera and contest? Well, then check out the video below starring White Gold and Strawberry Summers making some sweet music together to hold you over.

by Josh Warner

Spreading a branded video message on the internet isn’t alchemy; it’s common sense. Trust me, I’ve seen hundreds — both good and bad. Here are five things that we’re seeing work today to “hit to spread.”

Let video do the talking
As a brand creating videos for the web, you have a lot to say — messages to push, product to sell — but to quote Hollywood, if it’s not in the script, it’s not in the picture.

You can package, tag, title and describe your video, but above all else, you must get people to click on it. That means you need to let the video do the talking. When you’re pitching humor and entertainment sites, don’t use this time to espouse your product’s attributes. Leave that for tech and business blogs. Go with what interests your audience. Package and contextualize your video based on your vertical.

Don’t leave users hanging after a campaign is over
Some of our best campaigns beg for a sequel. The brand and agency did their job: They made a great video and let us do what we had to do to market it. But when the video ultimately became a success, there was no follow-up.

That leaves you with an audience that has connected to the video, left a comment and subscribed to a user channel. They’ve invested in the brand … and now they’re just waiting. Don’t leave them in limbo. If you have a strong campaign and know it, run with it before momentum is lost. Many of our most successful campaigns, such as Levi’s and “Guitar Hero,” followed up great videos with strong sequels to keep the conversation going. And that should be the goal of your brand.

Move beyond the view
“The view” is the defining metric for all video-seeding campaigns. But what’s behind the view, and how it is achieved, is just as important. When YouTube and other video-hosting sites record 250,000 views for your particular work, trust that millions more have likely seen it. They’ve seen it because someone posted it on their blog, tweeted about it or featured it on their site. You have to be willing to reach many to get a few to click through, just as with any other marketing conversion, like e-mail or banners. The more people you reach in more places, the better.

This is what we call the spread. Anyone can buy 250,000 views on a website and achieve their viewership goal simply enough, but you should also be aiming to hit your spread. It’s the crucial underlying metric for brands looking to stimulate conversation and achieve maximum reach on the social web.

Let go
Once you’ve seeded a video online, let go. Inevitably, haters on YouTube will say nasty things, prominent tweeters will ignore you and bloggers you like won’t post your embed. People will say exactly what they want to say, because yours is just another video they happened to watch or, worse, were asked to watch. Either they’ll like it and do something about it — make it a favorite, share it, comment — or hate it and leave a nasty comment. Some just passively watch the video without engaging more deeply.

As a brand, your best defense is to let the conversation take its course. Don’t add faux comments — “this vid really is awesome!” — and delete only comments that are blatantly offensive. Everyone expects haters to show up — and like the bully in the schoolyard, they’re best ignored.

Tricks are over
The faux viral video — a professional vid that mimics amateur work — is getting tired. You know the ones: videos where someone does something no normal person could do and everyone looks all amazed. It’s a trick that gets less surprising the more you see it. From “Gatorade Ball Girl” and “Levi’s Backflip” — which are really good — to the others that are less so, the faux viral appears mercifully to be on its last legs. But however we might miss it, what will replace it is even better.

Now is the time for more thematic work to shine. Examples of this are “Signs” by Publicis Mojo for Schweppes, a beautifully produced 12-minute piece with no dialogue, and the inspired “Bicycles” effort, where Danny MacAskill rides his bicycle about. They take their time, but good things often do. Because storytelling and presentation has become the priority, users are moved, and brands win just by being associated with them.

Here we witness the quiet death of a big lie: Quick and easy is no recipe for success on the web. For brands trying to get an audience on the evolving web, the times demand, more than ever, creative minds, true production savvy and thoughtful marketing.

File this one under “best minute of viral marketing ever.”

A video surfaced on YouTube today called Naked Girls Get Interrupted. It stars four attractive ladies — and a funny but unfortunate “interruption” from actor-model “Music Steve” — stripping off their clothes and strutting down a street in Los Angeles County. Censor bars obscure their private parts and display popular song titles.

Surely this isn’t what Kurt Cobain had in mind when he wrote “Smells Like Teen Spirit.”

It’s hard to look past the action in foreground, but after repeated viewings (all in the name of reporting), we believe they’re walking down the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica.

The editors of the professional-looking video aren’t saying who’s behind it. The minute-long clip was posted to a new YouTube channel called Windsieve.All signs point to a viral marketing campaign for the upcoming “Guitar Hero 5″ video game. The song titles shown in the video are all performed by bands that are listed on the game’s featured artists page, and game publisher Activision is no stranger to viral ads.

Dear Activision, we look forward to learning more about songs in the game by staring at partially naked women. Although perhaps it should have been given a different name: “Things people who play countless hours of Guitar Hero will never witness.”

A track listing with songs from the video, courtesy of GameDaily, is listed after the jump.

“All the Pretty Faces” by The Killers
“Looks that Kill” by Motley Crue
“Steady as She Goes” by The Raconteurs
“Smells like Teen Spirit” by Nirvana
“Under Pressure” by Queen & David Bowie
“Ring of Fire” by Johnny Cash
“Wolf Like Me” by TV on the Radio
“Kryptonite” by 3 Doors Down
“The Rock Show” by Blink-182
“Bleed American” by Jimmy Eat World
“Sweating Bullets” by Megadeth

Chris Applebaum is probably best known for the videos he’s done for extra-extra artists like Britney Spears and Rihanna. In “It’s All about the Roosevelts,” he slums it up for Taco Bell, but doesn’t stray too far from his trashy pop roots.

The statement “It’s All about the Roosevelts” riffs off Diddy’s “It’s All About the Benjamins,” a track from a year we’re too embarrassed to look back on and that plays on Benjamin Franklin’s appearance on the $100 bill. NOTE: The music is all original.*

Franklin Roosevelt, on the other hand, adorns the front of dimes — the currency Taco Bell’s campy pop band is trying to get you to drop in exchange for tortilla-ensconced ground beef. If TB’s pleather-clad background dancers so incline you, “drop them dimes” — but hell, drop enough of them for tacos, you’ll probably lose a few dimes you didn’t mean to.

The video will appear online and also precedes Transformers 2 in theatres. Wish we could’ve seen that audience reaction. We’re guessing stunned silence, followed by awkward laughter. That’s just the effect low riders have on people.

Stealth advertising — an ad-industry buzzword for a few years now — is so low-key it doesn’t look like advertising at all.

Turns out it’s also fairly recession-friendly — because it’s cheaper than traditional TV advertising. And when it works, it’s usually the kind of thing that really works.

Take that popular Web video of guys jumping and swinging and back-flipping into their jeans. It was paid for by Levi Strauss & Co. — at a fraction of the cost of a TV commercial.

Levi’s then paid a relatively modest fee to Feed Company, which planted the video — and a conversation about it — on the Web. The video has been viewed about 14 million times, according to Feed.

“Your marketing — if you’re successful — is going to be done by your audience,” explains Feed Company executive Josh Warner. “It’s where you’re getting return on investment that can really explode through the roof.”

The media helped promote Levi’s stealth advertising campaign by showing or writing about the jump-into-jeans video. It was featured in the online versions of the Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, and on David Letterman, MSNBC and Good Morning America — all for free.

(And now, with this report, NPR is biting on that lure: You can watch the video in our player here.)

Warner estimates it would cost between $100,000 and $200,000 to buy 30 seconds of commercial time on one of the big network morning shows.

“Stealth ads are very cheap to execute because you generally don’t have to buy expensive media time,” says Warren Berger, author of the books Advertising Todayand Hoopla. He believes we will absolutely see a lot more stealth and viral advertising during the recession.

“We’re in an environment now where viral messages can be very effective,” Berger says.

But there’s a lot of risk to go with the potential rewards of viral advertising. There’s no guarantee a quirky video will get passed around the web.

That’s why Eric Hirshberg of the agency Deutsch LA thinks we will see less of what he calls advertising-world “party tricks.” Companies are cautious in hard times, he argues.

“There’s an intensity and immediacy to their need to sell,” Hirschberg says — though he himself often counsels against that corporate caution.

Now more than ever, Hirshberg says, people need to be charmed. And creative viral advertising can do that.

NPR [link]

by Abbey Klaassen

Published: April 23, 2009

NEW YORK (Ad Age.com) — Last week, the Ad Age viral video chart illustrated T-Mobile’s staying power — its “Dance” spot that debuted in January was still no 2. This week’s views, at 748,855, were 1% higher than last week’s — good enough to disrupt the three-week chart-topping streak Samsung and its LED-draped sheep enjoyed.

Samsung dropped to no. 2 while Burger King’s ode to SpongeBob and Cadbury’s “Eyebrow Dance” hung onto the three and four spots, respectively. But new to the chart is a video promoting Head tennis rackets and starring Novak Djokovic (and his chest), Microsoft’s “Laptop Hunters” campaign and the “Fast Food Folk Song,” created as part of a Mountain Dew Baja Blast promotion.

The data, as always, is compiled by Visible Measures and includes the most recent week’s views — not total views over the entire life of a campaign. One change over the first three charts? The threshold to break into the top 10 is higher this week, at 271,985 views. Perhaps it’s a one-week anomaly, perhaps it’s due to increased usage of online video or social-sharing tools. Regardless, we’ll be watching to see if that trend continues in the weeks to come.

AdAge [link]

Source: Visible Measures

*The Visible Measures Top 10 Viral Video Ad Campaigns Chart focuses on brand-driven viral video ads that appear on online-video-sharing destinations. Each campaign is measured on a True Reach™ basis, which includes viewership of both brand-syndicated video clips and viewer-driven social video placements. The data are compiled using the Visible Measures Viral Reach Database, a constantly growing repository of analytic data on more than 100 million internet videos across more than 150 video-sharing destinations.

Note: This analysis does not include Visible Measures’ paid-placement (i.e., overlays, pre-/mid-/post-roll) performance data or video views on private sites. This chart does not include movie trailers, video-game campaigns or public service announcements. View-count results are incremental by week.

**Indicates percent change in views compared with the same period the week before.

To notify Visible Measures of an upcoming video ad campaign, or for an end-to-end assessment of your campaign’s overall performance, please contact Visible Measures directly.

We give you “Good Cop, Naked Cop.” It went live on YouTube this week, and Feed Company — the cats that brought you Never Hide and Live Unbuttoned — is doin’ the disseminating.

If the Cheerwine tickles yer fancy, visit the it’s a soft drink website. (Glad they were nice and clear about that from get-go, because we were holding out hope there’d be cheery ol’ liquor involved.) Site sorta reminds us of that Clearification thing Microsoft did back before Crispin sank its teeth into the account and ripped a hole in the brand equity continuum. You know, you’ve got a witty but neurotic guy … just bantering. With himself.

Campaign by Hauser Group; web content by Awesome, Inc. Also keep your eyes peeled for a Cheerwine “Chilled Out Tour” and ambassador program, expected to unroll in select markets in late ‘09.

Adrants [link]

Either Russia really is running nefarious energy experiments and flirting dangerously with the space time continuum, and the only people capable of uncovering it are a covert group of operatives who like to Twitter, or…something viral is afoot.   And Netizens are picking up the scent.

In fact, as blog dosdotzero uncovered via some pretty nifty detective work, this is all a campaign for Activision’s new first-person shooter game Singularity, steered by ad agency DDB and video-seeding maestros Feed Company.  The intrepid forum posters at Unfiction have uncovered even more content, including Flickr and Facebook accounts for Natasha.  They also found another site, named Katorga 12 after the creepy island in question (and the in-game, tell-all book of the same name, whose author was killed under suspicious circumstances), which turns out to be the home of the Singularity trailer. Ah, yes, it’s all coming together.

Adding to the depth of content are nice little touches like Natasha’s Facebook friend, Emily, corresponding with curious online sleuths, and alxnder12, the YouTube poster of the assassination video, adding as “Favorites” actual Russian news stories that might catch the eye of an international conspiracy theorist.  Yes, critics are already cropping up and taking swipes at the original video’s production values, the shakiness of some of the Russian translations, and the unlikelihood of anything very terrible happening with Einsteinium (the ominously referenced Element 99), no matter how far amok scientists might run with it.  And sure, when you’re promoting a shooter, sooner or later you’re going go have to step away from the backstory and show some, you know, shooting.  But these are still early days, and so far, this seems to be a pretty well-orchestrated campaign that’s already doing what it’s supposed to do: It’s got people talking.

Stay tuned. And keep an eye out for mad Russian scientists. Just in case.

NewTeeVee [link]

That’s what consumers have been asking ever since Gatorade began running its ambiguous black-and-white spots featuring only the stark letter G in the closing shot. Unfortunately, relatively few of them immediately found the answer. While that was exactly the campaign’s strategy — to create conversation — some experts think it’s a risky one that could result in a missed opportunity for Gatorade.

On Jan. 1, the day the commercial broke during the Rose Bowl, searches for “G commercial” surged, according to Google Trends. The search term took the No. 6 slot for the day, giving it a “Hotness” rating of “Volcanic.” When searching for that term, along with a number of other terms, including “What’s G” or “G,” the only clue came in a sponsored link for a YouTube channel. The channel, cryptically named “whatsg1965″ (Gatorade was founded that year), is also unbranded.

Five days after the launch, despite plenty of online inquiries, the commercial had garnered barely 70,000 views on the channel. A second version of the spot, featuring a new cast of athletes and posted on Jan. 4, had less than 900 views after two days. Several other videos posted Dec. 23 grabbed between 1,700 and 4,500 views in two weeks. Those videos are titled “No Excuses,” “Shine On,” “Bring It” and “Be Tough,” the new names of the Gatorade sub-brands, replacing Rain, A.M., Fierce and X-Factor, respectively.

The meaning of G
But even after finding the YouTube channel some consumers remained confused. Commenters at the site posited that the commercial could be for Guess, the clothing brand, or a “Saturday Night Live” skit. Elsewhere in cyberspace, consumers wondered whether the commercial was meant to promote Nike, God, a new African-American television channel, Georgetown University or G-Unit, the hip-hop group and clothing brand.

“I like the concept, a ‘G’ means many things to many different people, but when you’re using celebrities, why not make the brand connection more obvious? Celebrities can compete with your brand, if the message is too subtle,” said Josh Warner, president of Feed Company, a video-seeding firm. “Gatorade missed an opportunity to spur more conversation around the campaign by putting all the videos up at once on YouTube over the holidays when web usage trends are down. The marketing, how they rolled out these videos, could have been improved upon.”

But while the campaign has yet to catch fire online, Matt Cutler, VP-marketing and analytics at Visible Measures, cautions that it’s still early. There are some indications of viral pass-along, and a handful of sites have loaded the spot onto their pages. Mr. Cutler said if the videos don’t take off within four weeks of being posted, they likely never will.

Room for conversation
“It is very lightly branded, arguably not branded at all. And there seems to be some indication that the more you leave things open to conversation, the more conversation will occur,” he said. “In this creative, they chose to leave lots of room for conversation, but the risk is people seeing this and not knowing it’s associated with the Gatorade brand.”

For their part, the brand is remaining mum on future plans or even specifics on the current campaign, which is the first work from TBWA/Chiat/Day, Los Angeles. Last spring, Gatorade ended its six-year relationship with Element 79, Chicago. Gatorade declined to make executives available for comment.

“Ultimately, we want consumers to make the connection to us … so we aren’t discussing it more broadly right now,” said Jill Kinney, a spokeswoman for the brand. “Our strategy is to create consumer intrigue and insure everyone stays tuned for more in our quest for G.”

Advertising Age [link]

1. “Where the Hell is Matt?”

Advertiser: Stride Gum
Ad Agency: Matt Harding

Matt Harding quit his job to travel around the world and dance. Because you can’t watch this video, his third installment, without smiling it gets our top vote.

2. “Obama Yes We Can”

Advertiser: NA
Ad Agency: will.i.a.m and Jesse Dylan

Scarlett Johansson and 50 of her Hollywood friends sing a song with Black Eyed Peas’ will.i.a.m  in support of brand Obama. We’re so in.

3. “Backflip Into Jeans”

Advertiser: Levi’s
Ad Agency: Cutwater

Back-flipping into a pair of jeans only looks easy for the acrobatic hipsters in this video. But it didn’t stop us from watching this video again and again.

4. “Ball Girl”

Advertiser: Gatorade
Ad Agency: Element 79

Gee, we know Gatorade rehydrates your body after a work-out but can it propel you 15 feet up the left-field wall of a Triple A ballpark to snag a line drive? Apparently so.

5. “Wario Land: Shake It!”

Advertiser: Nintendo
Ad Agency: Goodby, Silverstein & Partners

How do you communicate the shake, rattle and roll of a side-scroller game for the Wii console featuring Wario, the bad-tempered counterpart to mild-mannered Mario? Take over a YouTube channel and have the whole page shake until game elements cascade down the page.

6. “Take It To The Next Level”

Advertiser: Nike
Ad Agency: 72andSunny

How do you take a soccer ad to the next level? Hire Madonna’s ex-Guy Ritchie to conjure up this first-person view of a day in the life of an amateur-to-riches soccer player.

7. “Bike Hero”

Advertiser: Activision
Ad Agency: Droga5

A kid on his bike uses his handlebars as a Guitar Hero game controller to navigate his route home. Sounds like a plan.

8. “SFW XXX Party Invitation”

Advertiser: Diesel
Ad Agency: Viral Factory

Diesel celebrates their 30th anniversary with an almost not SFW viral video that mashes edits of 70’s porn with strategically placed animations.

9. “Kobe Jumps Over Car”

Advertiser: Nike
Ad Agency: Weiden + Kennedy

So did Kobe Bryant really jump over the Aston-Martin? Well, maybe but we watched it anyway.

10. “Square Peg Round Hole”

Advertiser: Electronic Arts
Ad Agency: Weiden + Kennedy

Tiger Woods shoots a square peg into a round hole. Something we try to do every day.

The Guitar Hero homage was posted Tuesday afternoon by “madflux,” whose profile identifies him as a burger-flipper at McDonald’s named Kevin. No word yet on how the clip was made, but at the beginning of the video he holds up a sheet of paper that says, “Difficulty: Hard.” That would appear to be an understatement, given that no handlebar controller for the game is known to exist.

Only thing is, for an allegedly fan-created video, “Bike Hero” looks a bit too perfect. It’s the only video that madflux has posted so far to YouTube, and at least one viewer voiced suspicions that the apparent fan flick might be a plant: “What’s it like to work for Activision?” jibed one commenter using the handle OnlyRev0lutions on madflux’s profile page.

Guitar Hero is one of Activision Blizzard’s biggest franchises, with 24 million units shipped to date. The latest entry, released Oct. 26, sold 534,000 units in the week after its release, according to the NPD Group. That’s down considerably from the 1.4 million that Guitar Hero III sold in its first week a year earlier.

But it’s not out of line with game sales in general — according to NPD, revenues for the industry were up only 18 percent in the third quarter of 2008, compared to a 73 percent increase in the same period the year before.

Bike Hero [YouTube]

Wired [link]

In his session about the myths of using online video to create word of mouth, Warner described lessons learned while generating attention for Ray Ban’s “Guy catches glasses with face” and Levi’s “Guys backflip into jeans”–two videos that generated massive attention from viewers and media alike. His words of wisdom on making entertaining content work harder included:

• Realize that the viral videos your clients are clamoring for may be a fad. The piece that will stick around, however, is engagement with potential customers that generates two-way dialogue.
• Plan multiple messages for different audiences. Customizing short notes with reasons why bloggers and reporters representing different categories should care isn’t just smart—it’s imperative.
• It’s important to leave enough time to strategize video rollout. After weeks and often months of production, it’s easy to limit the window of time to post and distribute video and send it out at random. Advance planning and treating the rollout with the same care can make the difference between 100 views and 100,000.

Transparency and subtlety of brand links were major focuses of WOMMA attendees’ questions. Warner said that his company creates YouTube channel names that don’t include the client’s brand name, such as “Unzipped Productions” for the Levi’s video. A Gatorade entertainment lead at the session mentioned that the company created two versions of its ball girl catch video: the subtle version that took off and featured only a bottle of Gatorade at the girl’s feet, as well as a more branded version that was ready if the first didn’t spread virally. No matter the overt branding (and I lean toward more in the name of transparency), timing and close monitoring are crucially important when it comes to the launch and reveal.

Warner’s plea to “move beyond the view” and consider metrics outside a single number to live and die by was much appreciated. YouTube search results, feature placement, mainstream news mentions, and forum threads are all important additional considerations. Because, as Warner and his audience agree, audience engagement is just beginning to realize its potential.

360 Degrees Digital Influence [link]

The “Viral Video Marketing Survey: The Agency Perspective” (pdf) surveyed ad-agency executives and media buyers and found that 80% are “very familiar” with viral video. Some 72% say their clients are “interested” or “very interested” in using viral video as an integral part of their marketing campaigns – see chart.

The majority of ad execs (56%) also reported being “pleased” with the results of a viral video campaign, while less than 3% say they have been displeased.

Despite this enthusiasm, respondents said metrics for viral video success remain inconsistent and subjective, making viral video difficult to measure and leaving room for improvement in the areas of tracking and reporting, according to Feed Company. More than half (53%) said the area of tracking and reporting needs improvement and 21% said it needs “a lot of improvement” (view chart).

The number of views that constitute viral video success also varies widely – see chart. An equal percentage of respondents selected 100,000, 250,000 and 500,000, when asked how many times a video needed to be viewed to be considered successful.

Additional survey findings:

More than nine out of ten (92%) marketers labeled “exponential views” as the leading benefit to viral video marketing, followed closely with 87% choosing “brand engagement.” Online reach and the brand seen as “forward thinking” were also rated as highly positive factors.

Protecting the brand is extremely important for agencies and a huge concern for brand clients. While some found that the industry needs to greatly improve in this area (11%), most think it could improve “somewhat” (45%%).

Some agencies think that maintaining complete transparency during viral video marketing must improve. They were most likely to say that it needs slight improvement (37%), followed by “improvement” (32%), and “a lot of improvement” (26%).

95% of agency executives are seeking greater accountability from vendors responsible for tracking campaign effectiveness, and more than half (55%) say there is a need for better execution of viral video marketing strategies.

“The survey shows that agencies recognize the value of viral video for their clients even as they call for improvements,” said Josh Warner, president of Feed Company. “We’re definitely seeing more of these campaigns because it costs less to produce and market viral video than many other types of traditional media – and that’s attractive to marketers during an economic downturn.”

Media Buyer Planner [link]
Download the Viral Video Marketing Survey (PDF)

Those were two of the conclusions of a report released today from Feed Company, Hollywood, Calif., which specializes in “seeding” viral videos on the Internet on behalf of agencies and clients.

“The survey shows there’s still a lot of unknowns and differences of opinion about viral video,” said Josh Warner, president of Feed Company, “by agencies, brands and even within the different departments of agencies.” Warner added that for most the uncertainty hasn’t dimmed enthusiasm for the marketing method. “Clearly, for many, the value of the viral video isn’t in dispute, as long as it’s well executed,” he said.

More than half of the agencies surveyed (56 percent) said they were pleased by the results of previous viral efforts; only 3 percent were displeased. But the level of viewing to benchmark success varies considerably, Warner points out. Twenty-eight percent of respondents considered 1 million views successful; around 22 percent each would settle for 500,000, 250,000 or 100,000 views.

Warner attributed that difference to the relative experience of the agencies and to the fact that “every campaign is different. We’ve seeded videos where contextual blog pick ups and the quality of conversation are more than important than just the total number of views.”

Still, more than half (53 percent) said the industry needs better reporting and tracking methods. “We and others do exhaustive reporting,” Warner said. “Perhaps this speaks to the fact that they have not used us or TubeMogul or Visible Measures.”

Warner said the call for better reporting might be less a function of the efficacy of reporting than variable definitions of value. He explained that viral views are sometimes “engaged views,” not simply impressions, and the results are not easy to summarize. “What is the value of a comment, or someone sharing a video with a friend? This is still in the defining stage of a marketing practice in its infancy,” he said.

The “Viral Video Marketing Survey: The Agency Perspective“ study was conducted in August and September 2008 with 40 executives at 29 advertising and media buying agencies across the country, including Omnicom Group’s Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, independent Wieden + Kennedy, Publicis Groupe’s Digitas and Interpublic Group’s McCann Erickson.

Adweek [link]
Download the Viral Video Marketing Survey (PDF)

Viral Video Marketing Budgets Expected to Increase in 2009

But Benchmark for Success Remains Unclear

LOS ANGELES, Oct. 13 — A new report released today from online video seeding firm Feed Company shows 70% of ad agency and media buying executives plan to increase budgets for viral video marketing in 2009. The ”Viral Video Marketing Survey: The Agency Perspective” culled insights on viral video marketing trends from 40 executives at major advertising agencies and media buying firms including Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, Wieden & Kennedy, Digitas, and McCann Erickson.

Despite the industry’s enthusiasm for viral video, the benchmark for viral video success remains unclear with an equal percentage of respondents considering a viral video a success if it was viewed 100,000 times, 250,000 times, or 500,000 times. The tactic of creating and distributing viral video sponsored by advertisers to users on web video sites and blogs is increasing in popularity following a year that saw YouTube-charting videos from major brands such as Levi’s’ “Guys Backflip Into Jeans,” Gatorade’s “Ball Girl,” and Nike “Kobe Jumps Over Car.”

An overwhelming majority of agency executives reported the major benefit of viral video is the opportunity to achieve “exponential views,” followed by brand engagement, and online reach. “In the past, fear of ceding control to consumers during the marketing process made advertisers hesitant to create and release brand-themed video online,” said Miguel Gonzalez, VP, creative director of Draftfcb Chicago. “But the parade of content that has ‘gone viral’ shows that the results are worth the effort, even when the outcome is hard to predict.”

Yet ad agencies are seeking improvements on how viral video campaigns are tracked and executed: 95% of respondents seek greater accountability from vendors responsible for tracking campaign effectiveness, and more than half say there is a need for better execution of strategies. “The survey shows that agencies recognize the value of viral video for their clients even as they call for improvements,” said Josh Warner, president of Feed Company. “We’re definitely seeing more of these campaigns because it costs less to produce and market viral video than many other types of traditional media – and that’s attractive to marketers during an economic downturn.”

About Feed Company

Feed Company http://www.feedcompany.com, a Los Angeles-based online marketing agency, is the leader for seeding videos on the web for major brand advertisers in the U.S. Feed Company employs innovative marketing tactics and tools to get brand videos exposed to users of popular blogs, video sites, and social networks. Feed Company’s ability to feed engagement makes the agency the first choice for companies who want to ensure their videos are being watched online. Feed Company works with Fortune 500 companies and top-tier advertising agencies including Goodby, Silverstein & Partners and Interpublic Group’s Deutsch/LA.