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Advertising Symbiosis: The Key To Viral Videos
Advertising Symbiosis: The Key To Viral Videos
by Carmen Nobel
It probably won't shock you that
the most popular YouTube video in
the past month was "Gentleman,"
the latest hit from South Korean
rapper PSY, whose "Gangnam
Style" is the most-watched video of
all time. More surprising: among
the other most-watched videos was
an advertisement for bottled water.
Evian's baby&me features several
adults dancing with toddler
versions of themselves in the
reflection of a store window. Only
at the end of the 77-second video
do we see a bottle of Evian, along
with the slogan "Live young."
Since its release in April, the video
has garnered more than 53 million
YouTube views. By contrast,
Nestl's self-explanatory "From
Maine Water Springs to You: The
Journey of Poland Springs Water"
has barely cracked 500 views. So
why did one water commercial
sparkle on YouTube, while the
other fizzled?
The answer may lie at the heart of
new research by Thales S.
Teixeira, which identifies the
ingredients necessary to create
online videos so compelling that
viewers will not only want to
watch them but also actively seek
them out and share them with
friends, family, and coworkers.
The research shows that if sharing
an ad will somehow benefit the
sender as much as it helps the
advertiser, then the ad might go
viral.
The stakes are high for advertisers.
eMarketer estimates that online
video advertising in the United
States will increase from $1.1
billion in 2009 to $4.1 billion in
2013an overall spending rise
from 4.3 percent to 11.0 percent of
all advertising expenditures.
Advertisers can get the most bang
for the buck if they post their
videos on YouTube and then
motivate consumers to disseminate
the ads for them, via email or
social media. Getting an ad to go
viral is among the cost-saving
techniques that fall under the
umbrella of what Teixeira terms
lean advertising. (Other lean
advertising techniques include
do-it-yourself content,
crowd-sourced talent, and
do-it-yourself distributionalso
TAPPING INTO
CONSUMERS'
PERSONALITIES
Teixeira discovered the keys to
attraction and retention through a
series of lab experiments where
participants viewed real ads that
Teixeira selected from YouTube,
while a camera recorded their
facial reactions. They had the
choice of watching an entire ad or
skipping to the next one at any
time. Researchers collaborating
with Teixeira then measured the
participants' emotional responses
with a combination of eye-tracking
technology and facial expression
analysis software.
FIVE EXAMPLES OF
ADVERTISING
SYMBIOSIS
Teixeira offers five approaches as
examples to achieve virality
through advertising symbiosis:
CONCEPT: Make the
viewer the center of
attention.
EXAMPLE: Old Spice's
Twitter campaign. In
2010, Procter & Gamble
launched a campaign
where Facebook and
Twitter users were
encouraged to send
messages to Isaiah
Mustafa, the strapping
spokesman for Old Spice
who markets the idea that
if men can't look like him,
they at least can smell like
him. The advertising
agency Wieden+Kennedy
then created and uploaded
185 short videos where
Mustafa responded
personally to individual
Twitter users, a mix of
celebrities, politicians, and
average fans. Inevitably,
they supposedly shared the
personalized responses
with their social networks,
and many of the videos
received upwards of a
million views each.
CONCEPT: Offer the
viewer privileged access
to valuable content.
EXAMPLE: Virgin
Atlantic's sneak peek.
Also in 2010, members of
Virgin Atlantic's
frequent-flyer program
received an email message
with a link to the airline's
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