Viral Friday: Elf Yourself
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 OfficeMax with Elf Yourself. After last years huge success OfficeMax launched the popular Elf Yourself once more. Last year ElfYourself.com got 36 million hits in just five weeks. This year Elf Yourself is going to be a direct Christmas hit once again, so it seems. The runner up spot is for L.A.A.F. (Liberation Army Against Freedom). The ‘terrorists’ of the Liberation Army Against Freedom warn us for the dangers of improper use of fireworks. Here Comes Another Bubble by The Richter Scales completes this week’s top 3. The San Francisco based band sees another internet bubble is on the way and made a hilarious video with several well known figures from the Web 2.0 world.
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. Elf Yourself
After last years huge success, OfficeMax launched the popular Elf Yourself once more. The American office supplies retailer made only one change to the concept; you can now supply four, instead of just one, dancing elf with a face of your choice.
The relaunch of Elf Yourself is not very surprising. Last year the micro site lead to 20% more visits to the official OfficeMax web site. ElfYourself.com got, according to Adage, 36 million hits in just five weeks. Bob Thacker of OfficeMax: “Between this holiday season and last, consumers have created more than 9.5 million elves bearing faces from uploaded photos.” The reason for the viral: “It gives OfficeMax a heart and a personality”. According to the traffic indicators of Quantcast, Alexa and Google Trends, Elf Yourself is going to be a direct Christmas hit once again. Besides Elf Yourself OfficeMax has another micro site for it’s visitors, named Scroogeyourself.com.
2. L.A.A.F. (Liberation Army Against Freedom)
The Liberation Army Against Freedom (L.A.A.F.) ‘terrorists’ warn us for the dangers of improper use of fireworks. This new, yearly fireworks campaign from Stichting Consument en Veiligheid, a Dutch safety foundation, launched yesterday and is made by Amsterdam based advertising agency Selmore.
The four remarkable videos on www.laaf.info, that look like the video massages from the al-Qaida training camps, already have 116.000 views after just one day. The Dutch 8 o’clock NOS News (with 1.686.000 viewers) had the scoop last monday and aired one of the videos, from the beginning to the end. RTL News also, briefly, gave the campaign some attention. The L.A.A.F. videos can be found on several Dutch blogs, like Retecool, VKmag, Adfoblog and Reclamewereld.blog.nl, as well.
3. Here Comes Another Bubble
During the internet hype around the millennium several dot-com shares raised to unreal heights. In the spring of 2001 the bubble bursts and several internet companies went bankrupt. SVB Financial Group visualizes the IPOs and wash-outs of that period in this graph. With estimations of $15 billion for Facebook the band ‘The Richter Scales’ from San Francisco feels a new bubble is on the way. They made a hilarious video on Billy Joel’s ‘We didn’t start the fire’ with several well known faces from the Web 2.0 world. After four days the video has almost 400.000 views and can be found on several influential Web 2.0 sites, such as Techcrunch, Valleywag, Blueace and about 1.360 other blogs.
4. Chevrolet Chevy Malibu
At the end of September YouTube user Unsomnambulist witnessed a bank robbery in the center of Los Angeles. In the video, which he made, we see how masked man run out of the bank and quickly get in the getaway car. The police arrive at the scene and enclose the four in the getaway car. But still the robbers manage to escape… All this seems to be staged for the new Chevrolet Chevy Malibu viral.
5. The Little Mermaid: Give Us Your Voice Contest
In collaboration with Broadwayworld.com and hotel chain Marriot, Disney organizes the competition ‘Give us your voice contest‘. The contest is for the musical of the world famous fairytale ‘The Little Mermaid’ by Danish writer Hans Christian Andersen. Over 150 candidates attended the competition by uploading their contribution to YouTube. Singer Nick Pitera, who sings Part of your world in Arielle and A whole new world in Alladin, gave the campaign name.
6. Sorry, Internet
The strike of the scenario writers in Hollywood has entered its fifth week. Many writers use YouTube to tell the public why they are on strike. Due to the actuality and initiatives of writers of well known shows the videos quickly gain over 100.000 views. Two popular clips of the past weeks are Why We Fight and Not The Daily Show, With Some Writer. The latest video, titled ‘Sorry, Internet’ by Frank Lesser and Rob Dubbin of The Colbert Report, contains a series of popular internet memes, including The two talking cats, Nora the piano-playing cat, Skateboarding dog, Dramatic prairie dog and Otters holding hands, filmed as if they are on strike as well.
7. McCain Potato Parade
In the past year we have seen several virals in which you can sent personalized messages, like Get the message and Dylan Messaging. Now McCain Foods launches its first viral campaign. glue London and Aardman animations (known from Wallace & Gromit) created the beautiful animated micro site PotatoParade.co.uk with walking and talking Mr. Potato Heads. In the first week over 100.000 internet users from 124 different countries visited the site! Users can choose one out of 200 names, several signs and a custom text containing a maximum of 76 characters, which can be sent to a friend or collegue. (Source: BrandRepublic)
8. Call of Duty 4
To promote the new First Person Shooter (FPS) Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare game developer Activision hired DDB Los Angeles to create five viral videos. On the micro site Worldleaderreviews.com five world leaders review the game. The reviewers are Vladimir Putin (Russia), Kim Jong Il (North Korea), President Ahmadinejad (Iran), Fidel Castro (Cuba) and Muammar al-Gaddafi (Libya). (Source: Culture-Buzz)
9. USB Wine
Incroyable et génial! With the revolutionary USB Wine anyone can easily make its choice out of 1200 different wines. The gadget can be ordered from www.usbwine.com for the reduced and special price of not €29,90, but just €9,99! (Offer valid till December 31th). The USB Wine is available in three colors.
10. Axe Chocolate Man
Argentina based agency Vegaolmosponce created the commercial ‘Hombre Chocolate’ for the new Axe deodorant bodyspray ‘Dark Temptation’, with a dash of cacao. Tony Kuntz directed the video, which was shot in Los Angeles. (Source: Produ.tv)
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this is so cool
[...] been inundated with Elf Yourself emails from family and friends. It’s hugely successful. Viral Friday reports that Elf Yourself is by far the runaway viral video online, generating something like 40 [...]