Did you happen to see Angry Kid? Is a series of stop motion animations from Darren Walsh at Aardman Animations, depicting the mini-adventures of a 15 year old British brat with an attitude problem. Yes Sir, British humor and most of the episodes contain adult content
Angry Kid is a combination of pixilation, mask replacement and live action. It is a technique pioneered by Walsh and involves taking a live actor, sitting perfectly still and being moved like a puppet, while masks are replaced, to give the effect of speech and shot frame by frame.
The Angry Kid series is currently shown on digital channel BBC Three between some shows from 9pm. Season One has been released on DVD in the UK, while both seasons are available to buy in Australia.
All the Angry Kid animations are free to watch and/or download on the Atom Films website. Due to the short length of each episode, Angry Kid has become famous for being downloaded to mobile phones and shown to friends at schools and workplaces.
Do you remember the pigeon killing viral commercial of Ford Ka? It gave tremendous buzz, but off course no real pigeon was harmed in the video.
Chrysler recently introduced the Dodge Nitro in The Netherlands electrocuting and BBQ-ing a dog. It gave enormous buzz around the globe. Maybe tasteless but again no dog was really harmed.
The buzz around Dodge exploded in 2 days and many blogs and traditional media wrote about the viral commercial. The Chrsyler Vice President even had to explain the press Chrysler was sorry. And the viral commercial, created by BBDO was immediately banned from YouTube. At Jalopnik you can still see the banned Dodge Nitro viral commercial.
So killing fake animals seems to be a proven formula for buzz worthy virals? What will be next? A Wrangler Jeep as non spot in the Battle of Kruger video? This amazing user created video was watched over 19 Million times already at YouTube!
I am 100% sure I heard the CEO of BBDO say in Cannes 2006: “I don’t believe in user created video, the quality is simply not good enough”. As agency founder I understand, he would rather like to sell you his expensive art directors.
But, most viral commercials, even without that beautiful South American sunlight (a must have in TV commercials?), are much more compelling than many expensive TV commercials that we massively skip, zap away from or block with our TiVo. So I do believe in user created content and video’s! How about you?
When Alejo asked for a week off to go on holiday with his friends in January, his boss was not very willing to cooperate. In fact, he told him it would be easier to gather 50.000 signatures than to fulfill his Argentine summer dream. So that’s exactly what Alejo and his friends did. To convince his boss he really needed a break, Alejo started to gather signatures on the net.
Wednesday October 31st, he counted 190. Two days later, the number was around 2.500. Yesterday, November 9th, there are close to 15.000 and about 50 people signing his petition every minute. In this pace, Alejo should achieve his goal in a couple of days. All thanks to his blog, a video on YouTube and a Facebook group: “Firma por alejo y sus vacaciones”. Well, and some help from his friends here at ViralBlog. Happy holidays Alejo!
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 Ron Paul with “This November 5th“. Republican presidential candidate Dr. Ron Paul made US electoral history with an unprecedented single-day fundraising haul, thanks to the website “This November 5th” created by Ron Paul supporters. In 24 hours donors contributed over $4 million online. The runner up spot is for Make My Logo Bigger Cream. Agency Fusion, a web development firm, created a special cream to make all their clients happy. Make My Logo Bigger Cream does exactly what you think it will do; it makes logos bigger! Samsung’s How we met stop motion animation completes this week’s top 3. Four days, 1622 photos, 10x gel pens (blue), 1 marker (black), 1 marker red, 1 bottle of eyeliner, 1 razor, 16 packets of make-up remover wipes, 1 torch, 1 mirror and 1 Samsung G800 are just a few things to make the beautiful “How we met” animation.
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!
It is human nature to judge things we do not know or do not use stuff ourselves yet. But as a marketer and trend watcher I have trained myself to look at the same world, through a new pair of glasses, again and again. It’s hard sometimes, not to judge. I know.
Merijn tipped me about Social Lending Community Zopa. Zopa’s tagline I found challenging: Cut out the banks by borrowing at Zopa.
Is social lending a smarter, fairer and more human way of doing money? Is social lending a new financial revolution? Will banks be the next middle men to be cut out at loaning money? Share us your thoughts!
Last week I wrote an article about CadBury’s Drumming Gorilla. This morning I came across this well done spoof on Besserwerberblog. 20 year old Wonderbra model and singer Jentina Chapman is drumming like the Cadbury Gorilla. I like it! YouTube user barondrew posted the video 4 days ago on the popular video sharing site, without an embedding possibility? It has been viewed 60,000 times since. The Cadbury Gorilla gets some fierce competition, the comments are already in favour of the Wonderbra model.
Kodak was the company that really missed the digital era. It built factories in Asia producing traditional ‘photo rolls’, while the whole world was switching to digital camera’s. Missing this trend was a strategic mistake that costed Kodak many jobs and a loads of money.
But it seems that Kodak has got the digital trend this time? Seems like they claim it now? So, Kodak wanted to share it’s message clearly to all employees, at an event by showing a video.
But the ‘internal Kodak video message’ was uploaded to YouTube by somebody. Please be careful: the story about this stolen Kodak video is hearsay only. The story comes from a trusted viral spy out of our extended global network.
Maybe our community members can tell us more about this Kodak video? If Kodak sews us for publishing this video, I will let you know….
Recently we promised our community to tap into more beer virals. Well, we have found a new beer viral for you. See how the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra takes a challenge to play a concert at VB Stubby’s! It’s great storytelling and will certainly enhance your social status, if you send this to your friends!
The VB Stubby Symphony micro website also offers downloads, a remix competition and a create your own VB Stubby Song. This is a case of 360 viral marketing, for which I applaud Victoria Bitter and it’s creative agency. See the making of the VB Stubby Symphony video below.
Many marketers ask me this question: “If we are looking for a great viral, what kind of agency should we look for? Our media or advertising agency”? My explanation mostly is:”In the new, different and social media landscape agencies will play different roles”.
“Let your Advertising Agency create your TV commercials. To get attention with viral internet commercials, invite Viral Agencies. To buy attention through TV GRP’s or Online Video Ads at CPM rates, talk to your Media Agency”.
Maybe it’s about time we start to understand that the digital world asks for a new approach. For new agencies. Please don’t keep mixing-up getting attention with buying attention. It’s definately not the same! Share us your thoughts about this VB Stubby campaign. (Tip: Daan at Onetomarket)
A viral video for hardware store OBI is a huge hit in Germany with over 4 million viewers in 3 weeks, according to Hamburg based viral company DSG Dialog Solutions. Although the video is somewhat difficult to follow for non-German speaking internet users, it’s hitting a cool 1.8 million views in international videoportals such as MetaCafe, Break and MySpaceTV. The viral also got digged a month ago.
Talkshow queen Oprah Winfrey has launched her own channel on the Google owned video sharing website YouTube. Last Friday she unveiled her brand new channel in a video to the YouTube community. Oprah’s channel will feature exclusive videos she has made herself, previews and behind-the-scenes footage (what happens backstage and during commercials) from her Chicago-based show, who she has been hosting for 22 years now.
Tonight the Oprah Winfrey Show is all about the YouTube phenomenon. She reveives a huge number of YouTube stars in her show, which is shown in about 134 countries. YouTube billionaires Chad Hurley and Steve Chen are on the show, who rarely grant interviews. Others who are set to appear on tonight’s Oprah Winfrey Show are Britain’s Got Talent winner Paul Potts, Tyson The Skateboarding Dog, Dutch YouTube Star Esmée Denters, Judson ‘Evolution of Dance‘ Laipply, P. Diddy and several other YouTube sensations. Also Oprah has taken control since yesterday as a guest editor of the featured list on the YouTube homepage, presenting a few of her favorite videos.
