Viral Friday: Free Rice

Written by Paul van Veenendaal on November 16th, 2007 |

Viral Friday is the weekly viral video chart of ViralBlog, showing the 10 most popular viral videos, commercials or user-generated videos, carefully selected and ranked by popularity, viral impact & spread.

This week’s Viral Friday #1 position goes to Free Rice. Word game Freerice.com got a lot of media attention in the past week. The game asks its contestants to guess the meaning of certain words. For every correct answer the game donates ten rice grains to the World Food Program. The runner up spot is for OBI. The viral video of construction market OBI.de is a huge success in Germany with over 4 million views in just three weeks time. And the viral is an international success as well. CollegeHumor’s 24: The Unaired 1994 Pilot completes this week’s top 3. A hilarious spoof of the television thriller 24, which goes back ten years in time. We see how the cast deals with difficult situations using 1994 technology.

Do you want to see this week’s list from 1 to 10? Go on then, and have a look! We’d like to hear your opinion about the virals. Have fun!

1. Free Rice

The word game Freerice.com received a lot of media-attention last week from both on- and off line press. Amongst others, The Washington Post and the BBC wrote about the site, where digital grain of rice can be collected for the poor. The game asks participants to guess the meaning of certain words. For each good answer, the game donates ten grains of rice to the World Food Program of the UN (WFP). FreeRice went on line in the beginning of October and has collected after a month almost two billions rice granule. FreeRice is an initiative of the American John Breen, a pioneer on the territory of on line funding.

2. OBI Hammer Juggler

The viral video of construction market OBI.de is an enormous success in Germany with more than 4 million views in three weeks time. The video, produced by DSG Dialog Solutions from Hamburg, shows a juggler with 3 hammers, who can hit a nail in a beam above him. The German spoken viral has also international successes. Besides a publication on the front page of digg last month, the video can be found on various international videoportals, such as MetaCafe, Break and MySpaceTV. And… of course a spoof was made immediately.

3. 24: The Unaired 1994 Pilot

The success of CollegeHumor.com is not yet long to end. The humorsite, set up by two high school friends Josh Abramson and Ricky Van Veen from Baltimore (Maryland), scores very good with their CollegeHumor Originals, like “Internet Commenter Business Meeting“. Other great CollegeHumor Originals include “Street Fighter: The Later Years” and the Prank War series. Defunker, BustedTees, College Humor and Vimeo are part of the company Connected Ventures, known for the popular Lip Dub viral.

4. Socalled: You Are Never Alone

Socalled: is the stage name of Josh Dolgin, a Jewish young man from Montreal. He’s an musician, photographer, magician and writer. Socalled is rather versatile! He plays the piano and the accordion, sings and raps, is an arranger and a producer. For the track “You Are Never Alone”, which can be found on the album ‘Ghettoblaster’, he made this amazing video. And this is his first one! Within a week the video of Josh was seen 1 million times on YouTube! (Source: Concertzender, Imageyenation, Dutchcowboys)

5. HP: Jerry Seinfeld

Michel Gondry and Princess Fiona are one of the many stars who participated in the “The Computer is Personal Again” campaign of HP. In the newest video of the computer manufacturer Jerry Seinfeld takes part, known of the many rewarded and yet always very popular sitcom Seinfeld. The standup-comedian, who currently can be seen in the Bee Movie, was responsible for the necessary buzz last week, by making a scene at Larry King on CNN. Meanwhile, the HP commercial with Jerry Seinfeld, is already seen more than a half million times on YouTube.

6. Philips: amBX Pranksters

As a promotion for the amBX-experience technology for gaming of Philips, the Dutch company created this crazy Japanese video, where Japanese teenagers are being pranked by Sumo wrestlers, who are banging through walls.

7. Volkswagen Drive In

Volkswagen has become sixty years old! Reason for a celebration! That’s what the German car manufacturer thought. Volkswagen let ACHTUNG! make the interactive campaign “Volkswagen Drive In: the sound of 60 years of Volkswagen“. The intention of the interactive game is to match recognizable sounds from the ‘50,’ 60, ‘70,’ 80, ‘90 and 2000 to the Volkswagens from the same periods. If you match more than 10, then you can win an iPod Nano or iPod Touch. With this campaign Volkswagen wants to show her history of models, based on music that everybody knows. The campaign, only made in the Dutch language, received many interests of marketing blogs from Germany, France and Israel. (Source: Marketingfacts, Reclameweek)

8. Led Zeppelin: The Mothership

To promote the launch of the newest Led Zeppelin album “The Mothership”, many rock fans are helping the English rock band to “Zeppelise” the internet, besides using the cult-site NetDisaster.com. Internet users can fill in an web address by choice and see then with a single click, how Zeppelin’s take over and the site with the “Immigrant Song“. Chris Quigley Rubber Republic says on Viralmonitor, that meanwhile more than 100,000 sites are being “Zeppelised”. Popular ‘Zeppelise’ sites are Google, Facebook and the website of the British Prime Minister. The internet stunt is supported by the campaign blog Thezep.net, set up by Rhino UK and managed by Led Zeppelin fan Ian Ochiltree.

9. Orangina: Naturally Juicy

Advertising agency Y&R made this musical and refreshing video for the French Soda Brand Orangina. Take a look at the minisite Naturellementpulpeuse.fr. (Source: Reclamewereld, Youngmarketing)

10. Victoria Bitter Orchestra

Australian beer brewer Foster’s got help from the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra to play the Victoria Bitter theme song. The Orchestra didn’t use theur regular instruments though, they used… Victoria Bitter bottles! The Victoria Bitter Stubby Symphony micro site offers several downloads, a remix competition and the ability to create your own VB Stubby tune. (Source: ViralBlog)

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