Filed under: Video Production, viral | Tags: production, top 10, video, viral
1. Keep it simple. Many of the simplest ideas have become the most viral. Don’t try to cram lots of different ideas and concepts into one video as it will most likely get lost in the fog of other snappier more easily understood videos.
2. Keep it short. If your video is 10 minutes long, think again. Only the most committed online video obsessive will stick with one thing for that long.
3. Make it funny. The test of whether something is funny is not just that you find it funny, it needs to appeal to the mainstream if you have any hope of making it viral. Test it on friends by all means, and if they aren’t laughing out loud at the pay-off then it probably isn’t that funny after all.
4. Include something risqué/sexy. Perhaps an obvious one, but throwing in some sort of nudity, ideally funny and clever nudity, can often be enough to make things spread far and wide so to speak. But don’t go too far, no one’s going to send their friends out and out porn.
5. Include something controversial. You don’t need to offend people, but being brave enough to make some sort of comment on society, or showing something that will stimulate some debate on the internet is sure to make your video go viral. This is a tried and tested method for some charities and causes on the web.
6. Include a very clever technique. If you can’t think of anything funny, and you don’t like being controversial, then spending some time creating something that looks particularly difficult, time-consuming and above all interesting to watch, can help your video to spread. This is how some big brand commercials end up becoming virals as people try to work out how something was done, or just watch it and think ‘wow, that’s really clever, I wish I’d thought of that’.
7. Make it relevant to a recent news item, especially celebrity news. A sure fire way to help push your video into the stratosphere is to jump on a recent news item that has already spread around the web, and create something that picks fun at a celebrity, or a politician, or takes a sideways look at something in the news, like an election or a sports event.
8. Don’t just make an advert. There is something people don’t like about videos that simply promote a product, unless of course it fulfils most of the above in some way. With some notable exceptions, most ads on TV aren’t particularly clever or funny, but often more informational. No one will send their friends a video explaining the benefits of a product.
9. If at first you don’t succeed, try again. Many people give up trying to make viral videos because they think that their video deserves to go viral but for some reason doesn’t catch on. Don’t give up. If the above criteria are fulfilled in some measure then eventually something will stick. And remember, just because you think it’s great, other people might not. Test it out on people who will give you honest feedback on whether they would actually send it on. And always ask yourself the question ‘would I send this on to other people if I was sent it by a stranger?’
10. Seed the video well. This could actually be it’s own list of ten ways to seed a video, but that’s for another day. If you don’t know what seeding is then you have to be extremely lucky for your video to go viral in any kind of scale. The very fact that companies exist who do nothing but seeding should tell you that it is a strategy often employed to make videos go viral.
Filed under: Fun stuff | Tags: christmas, Motion Graphics, rage against the machine, Video Production, viral
A manic evening of filming time-lapse shots of London’s Christmas lights and landmarks, followed by a marathon post-production, tracking and VFX session, resulted in our Christmas video for this year, a timely festive video with the tune of the moment and Christmas number one from Rage Against The Machine. Notching up 50,000 views in just five days, the video was the 4th highest rated video on youtube in the week leading up to Christmas.
Filed under: Video Production | Tags: viral, viral advertising, viral marketing
Many companies, brands and agencies have gone crazy for virals over the last few years. The idea that you can get your potential customers to spread your message for you, for free, is a compelling one. But since the good old days of simple, funny clips making their way around the web over several months or years, a new breed of experts has created a commercial industry to ensure that a viral ‘goes viral’ within days, as opposed to being an unknown quantity or worse still, falling completely flat.
The problem with this guarantee of viral success, measured by the amount of ‘views’ a video gets, is that it takes away the need for the funny, cool and sexy elements that have always been needed for something to go viral by itself. It opens up the door for out and out branded commercials to be seen by a ton of people without the need for it to be good enough to send to their mates.
Now this is interesting because it opens up quite a dilemma for marketers that were once drawn to the simplicity and low cost of viral marketing. Planning, developing, producing, seeding and measuring a viral campaign is now as complicated, technical, difficult and expensive as traditional marketing channels. Budgets to make something go viral properly surpass five-figures with ease, and to absolutely guarantee success, can run into six-figures. For me, this is a dilemma because for something to be attractive as a viral, and therefore good enough, funny enough, and indeed cool enough to send on, then it has to bypass the traditional hit of brand, product and logo associated with all other forms of advertising. It has to appear so unbranded as to be surely less effective on a measurable, bottom line sort of way…the sort of way Alan Sugar would like, that put’s money in the bank as a direct return on the advertising spend.
Another factor that is changing the way viral advertising can work is the increasing amount of convergence between media channels, and the introduction, almost every week it seems, of a new platform to sell to consumers. At what point is a commercial a viral? At what point is a viral a commercial? Cadbury’s drumming gorilla, and T-Mobile’s train station dance flash-mobbing have both ‘gone viral’ as well as appearing across all other types of advertising media. At what point will viral no longer exist as an individual marketing term? At what point will it simply fall in line with all other forms of advertising and become just another part of the agency bill? Some would say it already has. I think the term viral has been and gone, as a useful term anyway. Everything in advertising is trying to be viral now, and it would be a foolish agency that didn’t include in a response to a brief, a concept that gets people to talk about a brand or product to each other, to spread the word, to spread the brand.
In a world where advertisers are now trying to squeeze every last penny out of their shrinking budgets, will they soon think about just sticking with instant, measurable advertising on TV and in the press? Will they opt to save their cash, rather than spending big on producing a hit-and-miss ‘viral’ that needs forcing into circulation, and crow-barring into the mass consciousness with mass ‘seeding’? Who knows….anyway, it’s nearly the end of the day, so I’m off to check out some funny stuff on youtube before I head home…
Just seen this from the very talented people at Superfad. To what extent is producing stuff like this controversial? Would you produce it for your client and put it on your company website, or would you raher play it safe and sanitise your public image? It wouldn’t be allowed on TV for fear of offending someone. But, for what it’s worth, everyone who I’ve shown it to thinks it’s delightful and funny and all the things you’d expect from a viral ad.
Work like this reminds me of the time someone phoned up from an ‘adult accessories’ store wanting a funky animation of their funky ‘products’, which turned out to be a load of strange looking rubber items which were recognisable only by the shape of hole they would fit into! The question is, would we have put the finished piece on our website and showreel had we won the job (which we didn’t)? …I don’t think we would have; are we prudes? Or are we worried our clients may be offended? I guess it’s a bit like swearing in front of your girlfriends parents…we all know everyone swears..sometimes..a bit (don’t they?), but familiarity has to set in before you know the boundaries. Putting work like this on your website is like swearing at your mother-in-law at your first meeting. She could get offended, but then there’s every chance she’ll just laugh and love you more for it. I’m in the latter camp about Superfad, I think they’re great.
Video Production Blog from Scorch London 