Last week we discussed Dan Greenberg's article, "The Secret Strategies Behind Many “Viral” Videos" that he posted on TechCrunch late last year. He gave an impressive list of things his team does in order to make their clients' videos go viral. Our discussion about whether or not it's ethical to promote a video using these tactics started with the deck below....
Towards the end of our discussion we all agreed that our work doesn’t stop with adding a video to YouTube and crossing our fingers it goes viral, there is much more work to do beyond that. We also agreed that we wouldn’t feel comfortable promoting our clients’ videos with some of the shady tactics that Dan describes.
In order to help us develop a 'menu', if you will, of viral tactics for our clients to choose from we've decided to develop our own video and viral strategy using all the tactics we feel are ethical and smart to make our video go viral. I am now going to open this post up for Video Ideas - please post your ideas in the comment section below!
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4 comments:
What if we did "A Day in the Life of a LolCat"? Play off the existing internet phenomenon and do footage of a cat's entire day and its thoughts in LolCat lingo.
Or what about "Man on the Street" interviews asking people to define some of our most-loathed PR buzzwords. Like "carpet bombing" or "opening the kimono".
Or maybe something involving gangster gnomes.
Instead of doing a day of the life of a LoLCat, what if we did a video that highlighted a day in the life of a flack. We could have a lot of fun making fun of ourselves at the very least.
How many people remember the old Mentos commercials? Well I think we should re-enact my favorite Mentos commercial into a viral video.
Do you remember the one where the car blocks the cross walk as a guy and his friends are crossing the street? Well the guy is separated from his friends and through the inspiration of his Mentos breath mint candy he decides to crawl through the man's backseat. At the end the guy shows the Mentos to the man and all is forgotten. If you need a refresher...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P94tzjG2lAE
I don't know about everyone else but many a time I've crossed the street in Seattle only to be blocked by a car. I suggest we document these moments and show the modern day Mentos commercial. There could be mace involved, police, the dumbfounded motorist who can't believe some person is crawling through their car, the possibilities are endless.
I truly believe what makes something viral is whether it's genuine. Because of this I've been debating over whether the cars should be owned by friends or if we do it to complete strangers. Although I was told we want to keep these legal it might be better to use friends and their cars, but they have to be good actors.
So I'm thinking a series of short vids (they have to be 30-45 seconds to satisy the rules anyways) depicting various high school scenes, but with people dressed up in YouTube costumes (i.e. a sandwich board that looks like a youtube page), and they're all competing to be more popular (most views). The more risque videos would be the most popular, the weird video would be like the indy arthouse kids, etc. It would basically be a lot like Mean Girls, but with YouTube vids as the main characters.
The whole youtube thing and our involvement just reminds me of high school antics, so I'd like to see that recreated in a literal sense.
And yes, I own a copy of Mean Girls. In my defense, it was originally purchased because of my crush on Tina Fey. I then discovered that it's actually a really great movie.
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