In today’s consumer world, the brand is King. But with so many ads around, are we suffering from advertising fatigue? The advertisers think so and want to spice things up.And these days, there’s only one place for spice: the internet…
Shot on 35mm film, with a production budget of anywhere up to £40,000, this seems to be a normal car advert. But its subject matter would be unlikely to pass television advertising guidelines anywhere in the world.
Explosion. Polo: Small but tough.
It appears calculated to offend as many people as possible. Volkswagen have - obviously - denied commissioning, making or funding it, saying they will sue the people who did.
Richard Leishmann: Managing Director, Boreme.com:
Obviously VW would like to tell us they had nothing to do with it and maybe they didn’t. We just don’t know. This has happened before, where obviously it’s in the large manufacturers interest to put out something controversial, and then to say they knew nothing about it.
The VW ad is the latest and most controversial in a line of what’s known as viral advertising. In January, the first ever ‘viral awards’ were held to celebrate key players in the burgeoning industry.
Viral – or buzz - marketing relies on people finding the funniest ads on the ‘net, and forwarding them to their friends. The friends tell their friends, who tell their friends…
Richard Leishmann: Managing Director, Boreme.com:
It’s really the old fashioned word of mouth marketing. There’s nothing that sells a product like a friend telling you its great. Advertisers have realised that if they can tag their product message to an e-mail that is sent from friend to another friend, it carries an extra weight, it’s more trustworthy than simply an ad on television.
Matt Smith, Co-founder, Viral Factory:
There was a clip called bad day that went round years and years ago, where a man loses his temper with his computer, where he throws his monitor down on the floor and kicks it. EVERYONE saw that clip when it went round. So it didn’t take much of a leap of imagination to say if you tag a brand to that - gold dust.
Richard Leishman:
If it’s got some kind of celebrity involvement – that helps. If it’s funny, that obviously helps. And increasingly there’s this thing about is it controversial? On the internet the boundaries of taste are somewhat broader than they are on television. And viral e-mails often go close to the outer boundaries. And it’s that that make people want to view them or forward them to their friends.
Richard Leishman runs Boreme.com, a message board where viral ads - deliberately too risqué, obscure or controversial for TV - are ‘seeded’ by advertisers. The idea is people come here, and forward the best clips to their friends. To him, the more controversial an ad is, the better. The VW ad has received hundreds of thousands of hits on the web, and, despite the brouhaha, Richard feels it will have done the VW brand no harm at all.
Richard Leishmann:
The audience it’s targeted at – these 21 year old males – they actually quite like it. They don’t feel offended by it. So in terms of reaching that demographic, the advertisers are spot on. They’re getting their message out there, they’re getting a lot of coverage, and the people they aiming at are looking at it. So I think a lot of advertisers realise they can go into quite controversial areas, maintaining their distance by saying they denounce it and that they have nothing to do with it, whilst reaping a great deal of promotional mileage from it.
The Viral Factory is one of the world’s leading producers of viral adverts. They have won numerous awards, including a Gold Lion at Cannes, for their creative and humorous ads. For them, like other viral advertisers, the far edges of taste often prove to be the most successful.
SOT: Up next the Ukrainian pair of Mosienko and Bubka, going for their fourth Trojan gold...
This is one of the ads that has won so many awards for the Viral factory. It’s part of a series of online videos for Trojan condoms.
Cleverly aping the BBC coverage of the Athens Olympics, it has a far from BBC image.
SOT: "There’s the spread. And there’s the hoik… Now can he hold it? Can he hold it? Surely he’ll get three lights…?? Yes he has! Brilliant! Unbelievable scenes here. Mosienko still casting a daunting shadow across the sport of pelvic powerlifting."
Matt Smith, Co-founder, Viral Factory:
You generally receive these from people you know. And I think that’s absolutely crucial. We couldn’t get away with half of what we get away with if it was the company that was distributing it, actively distributing it. But it’s not. It comes from your mates. Therefore your mate takes some responsibility for you having seen it. And that alone is why people are far less sensitive about what they see in virals than what they see on the internet.
The Viral Factory also made a series of adverts for Ford, that depicted an ‘evil’ car. One involved a computer generated cat having its head cut off. Like the Polo ad, it, too, caused a stink.
Reporter (off):
Did you make the one, where the cat gets its head cut off?
Matt Smith
I might have done…
(Off)
Because Ford were trying to distance themselves from that weren’t they?
Matt Smith:
Yes they were. I think… I think I’d better not talk about it…
More and more companies are climbing on the viral wave. Even the Green and Conservative Parties have plans to use viral marketing in the next election.
Controversial or nay, viral marketing is going to grow and grow…
Credits:
Producer/editor: Sam Goss
Additional reporting: Andrew Boyle
Additional camera: Sam Stonehill
Shot on 35mm film, with a production budget of anywhere up to £40,000, this seems to be a normal car advert. But its subject matter would be unlikely to pass television advertising guidelines anywhere in the world.
Explosion. Polo: Small but tough.
It appears calculated to offend as many people as possible. Volkswagen have - obviously - denied commissioning, making or funding it, saying they will sue the people who did.
Richard Leishmann: Managing Director, Boreme.com:
Obviously VW would like to tell us they had nothing to do with it and maybe they didn’t. We just don’t know. This has happened before, where obviously it’s in the large manufacturers interest to put out something controversial, and then to say they knew nothing about it.
The VW ad is the latest and most controversial in a line of what’s known as viral advertising. In January, the first ever ‘viral awards’ were held to celebrate key players in the burgeoning industry.
Viral – or buzz - marketing relies on people finding the funniest ads on the ‘net, and forwarding them to their friends. The friends tell their friends, who tell their friends…
Richard Leishmann: Managing Director, Boreme.com:
It’s really the old fashioned word of mouth marketing. There’s nothing that sells a product like a friend telling you its great. Advertisers have realised that if they can tag their product message to an e-mail that is sent from friend to another friend, it carries an extra weight, it’s more trustworthy than simply an ad on television.
Matt Smith, Co-founder, Viral Factory:
There was a clip called bad day that went round years and years ago, where a man loses his temper with his computer, where he throws his monitor down on the floor and kicks it. EVERYONE saw that clip when it went round. So it didn’t take much of a leap of imagination to say if you tag a brand to that - gold dust.
Richard Leishman:
If it’s got some kind of celebrity involvement – that helps. If it’s funny, that obviously helps. And increasingly there’s this thing about is it controversial? On the internet the boundaries of taste are somewhat broader than they are on television. And viral e-mails often go close to the outer boundaries. And it’s that that make people want to view them or forward them to their friends.
Richard Leishman runs Boreme.com, a message board where viral ads - deliberately too risqué, obscure or controversial for TV - are ‘seeded’ by advertisers. The idea is people come here, and forward the best clips to their friends. To him, the more controversial an ad is, the better. The VW ad has received hundreds of thousands of hits on the web, and, despite the brouhaha, Richard feels it will have done the VW brand no harm at all.
Richard Leishmann:
The audience it’s targeted at – these 21 year old males – they actually quite like it. They don’t feel offended by it. So in terms of reaching that demographic, the advertisers are spot on. They’re getting their message out there, they’re getting a lot of coverage, and the people they aiming at are looking at it. So I think a lot of advertisers realise they can go into quite controversial areas, maintaining their distance by saying they denounce it and that they have nothing to do with it, whilst reaping a great deal of promotional mileage from it.
The Viral Factory is one of the world’s leading producers of viral adverts. They have won numerous awards, including a Gold Lion at Cannes, for their creative and humorous ads. For them, like other viral advertisers, the far edges of taste often prove to be the most successful.
SOT: Up next the Ukrainian pair of Mosienko and Bubka, going for their fourth Trojan gold...
This is one of the ads that has won so many awards for the Viral factory. It’s part of a series of online videos for Trojan condoms.
Cleverly aping the BBC coverage of the Athens Olympics, it has a far from BBC image.
SOT: "There’s the spread. And there’s the hoik… Now can he hold it? Can he hold it? Surely he’ll get three lights…?? Yes he has! Brilliant! Unbelievable scenes here. Mosienko still casting a daunting shadow across the sport of pelvic powerlifting."
Matt Smith, Co-founder, Viral Factory:
You generally receive these from people you know. And I think that’s absolutely crucial. We couldn’t get away with half of what we get away with if it was the company that was distributing it, actively distributing it. But it’s not. It comes from your mates. Therefore your mate takes some responsibility for you having seen it. And that alone is why people are far less sensitive about what they see in virals than what they see on the internet.
The Viral Factory also made a series of adverts for Ford, that depicted an ‘evil’ car. One involved a computer generated cat having its head cut off. Like the Polo ad, it, too, caused a stink.
Reporter (off):
Did you make the one, where the cat gets its head cut off?
Matt Smith
I might have done…
(Off)
Because Ford were trying to distance themselves from that weren’t they?
Matt Smith:
Yes they were. I think… I think I’d better not talk about it…
More and more companies are climbing on the viral wave. Even the Green and Conservative Parties have plans to use viral marketing in the next election.
Controversial or nay, viral marketing is going to grow and grow…
Credits:
Producer/editor: Sam Goss
Additional reporting: Andrew Boyle
Additional camera: Sam Stonehill