Written by Niels Bellaar on December 21st, 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 Ford with Homemade Ford Balloons. During last years Champions League final, Ford launched it’s new commercial. In the commercial several cars are flying through the air carried by balloons. Three guys from Auckland, New Zealand now try to get a real car airborn with the use of just 5.000 helium filled balloons. The runner up spot is for a capella group Straight No Chaser. The American group made this hilarious version of the classic ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas’. Evil Eye Baby completes this week’s top 3. This cute baby shows its alter ego on command.
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!
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Written by Igor Beuker on December 21st, 2007 |
With my friend Stephan Fellinger I have been doing interactieve marketing workshops for many years. It’s a delight to help with brand marketers ignite their digital brand revolution. But Stephan and I keep each other sharp as a razor too.
Last course he told a shocking but true story about Hennes & Mauritz, the fashion brand that has embraced e-commerce. In april 2005 the 18 year old Dutch Frits Kranenborg started the H&M Hyve at Dutch dominated social network Hyves (5.000.000 members).
This user created H&M Hyve (simply the best!) has today 149.472 members!!! It’s one of the largest communities in Holland. In NRC Next, a Dutch Daily Newspaper Frits stated he has never ever heard from H&M?!
When H&M was asked:”why don’t you participate in this community or reward these loyal members?” the H&M spokes person stated:”No we don’t do much with it. We think participating will cost to much time and we will not be able to steer te discussion”. Further the spokes person declared:”At your own website you can control everything, not in a community like this”.
Also H&M states:”We don’t think we can interview these members, we already have our own customer panels”. Frits has placed a link to this NRC Next article where H&M Hyve members can read the H&M statements. Why doesn’t H&M tap into this great UGC community?
Isn’t this community marketing and engaging consumers from the stone age? Can’t H&M fire it’s brand manager and hire a social media marketer? If I would have been brand manager at H&M, I would have hired Frits immediately!! What happens if the community will turn against H&M and 150.000 consumers stop shopping at H&M for a month or 3? Can companies be too busy to reward 150.000 loyal members? Share us your thoughts on H&M’s approach?
Written by Igor Beuker on December 21st, 2007 |
Today I did a LaComunidad trend workshop for Microsoft MSN in Amsterdam about online video, BGC, UGC and video advertising. Audience were brand marketers from Red Bull, Vodafone, L’OREAL and Beiersdorf. Other speakers were from MetrixLab and Universal Media.
We discussed pre-roll video ads, branded skins around videos, viral internet commercials, BGC and UGC and the video case study 2007 by the Online Publishers Association. The brand managers asked for more cases and research, so why not share some more studies?
That video will beat search in eyeballs in 2008 is a no-brainer. The number of watched online videos watched per month in the US only will hit 10 Billion in 2008 easily! The attending brands liked that trend.
The latest study from the Pew Internet & American Life Project finds that the next generation at least is switched on and producing content. The the study tells, 59% of all American teenagers engage in at least one form of online content creation.
Of those 35% of all teen girls blog, compared with 20% of online boys, and 54% of girls post photos online compared with 40% of online boys. Boys however like their video, with 19% of boys posting video online vs. 10% of girls.
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