celebrate the it’s opening as Europe’s largest urban shopping centre, Westfield Stratford City, a British Mall got The Viral Factory to produce this instantaneous youtube hit on 100 Years of East London Fashion in 100 Seconds . Brilliant tagline and media campaign which as of today, exceeds 2.5million viewership in a mere 3 weeks.
Peeking a little deeper into this, I asked myself, what’s the formula behind it? I think there are 3 core reasons that can help PR / Marketing Ad campaigns to achieve high leverage:
Give Audiences Reasons to Celebrate – It’s about understanding primal and raw emotions and psychologies that youtube offers us instantaneous bits of happiness in palm sized iPhone screens to 40″ TVs, where we escape for brief moments into the social media sphere, at times to relieve the daily grinds and monotonies though accessing viral videos that give us good reasons to celebrate, or simply, to be Happy.
It’s not about how cool, hip, trend, or comparatively / competitively advantageous a brand, person or product is. And while I truly enjoy watching some of these ads, for some reason, I remember ads that make me inspire happiness. It’s the “Feel Good” Aha moments that are essential, in effective viral video campaigns.
Being Bold & Innovative – It’s ridiculously tedious to make this video. Dancing 100 times in different costumes, countless locations stitching them together in at least 100 frames etc. But it’s innovative, and it gets the message across. Compressing 100 years of fashion in bite sized pieces, how much better can it get?
Subtleness & Simplicity – I’ve never been favourable of hollywood stunts / effects that can give you space age 3D / 4D high-definition-that-you-can-even-see-the-eyeballs-of-mosquito. We don’t need those. Nice? – Yes. Must Have – No. Good to Have? – Maybe. It’s the cleanest, simplest videos that get the messages across – HARD. I like the one byPurplefeather on “The Power of Words”. Simple, subtle and inspiring.
So yes, it’s possible to get millions of hits with 100 seconds. At the end of the day, you need not have the best cutting edge technologies to achieve this…instead, it takes intellectual magic and effective communication strategies to save the day.
What are you favourite videos that makes us celebrate, is innovative and simple? Share it!