Viral Friday: Trapped in an Elevator for 41 Hours

Written by Paul van Veenendaal on April 25th, 2008 |

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 weeks Viral Friday #1 position goes to Nick Paumgarten with Trapped in an Elevator for 41 Hours. A time-lapse video of a man trapped in an elevator for 41 hours has become something of an Internet sensation after surveillance camera footage emerged after nearly a decade. The runner up spot is for Nokia’s Human Snake. Farfar and Hobbyfilm created the innovative “Get Out and Play” campaign to promote Nokia’s game console N-Gage. Humanitainment.com completes this week’s top 3 with Baracky: The Movie. Hillary Clinton had to score big in Pennsylvania, and did. But can she win from Baracky…

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. Trapped in an Elevator for 41 Hours

A time-lapse video of a man trapped in an elevator for 41 hours has become something of an Internet sensation after surveillance camera footage emerged after nearly a decade.
“After a certain period of time I knew that I was in pretty big trouble because it was the weekend,” Nicholas White said Monday on ABC-TV’s “Good Morning America“.
The video of his Oct. 15, 1999, ordeal in an elevator in New York’s McGraw-Hill building was posted online to accompany an article in the April 21 edition of The New Yorker. Nick Paumgarten, known for his articles about elevators, reduced the 41 hour film to a few minutes. The video can be seen on the magazine’s Web site and has been viewed more than 1.8 million times on YouTube and 470.000 times on Break. Several news sites and blogs like ABC News, BoingBoing, Gawker, NY Post, Gizmodo and The Huffington Post reported about the unfortunate New Yorker. (Source: SFGate, Volkskrant)

2. Human Snake

Swedish advertising agency Farfar, known for Great Pockets and Meet The Mighty Stavros, created the innovative campaign “Get Out and Play” to promote Nokia’s game console N-Gage. The campaign, with a beautiful stop-motion game and viral video, is based on Nokia’s popular game Snake. Over 300 blogs posted a link to the action site and about 600.000 people viewed the video on YouTube. There also is a behind the scenes video available.

3. Baracky: The Movie

Hillary Clinton had to score big in Pennsylvania, and did. The senator got slightly less than 55 percent of the votes, Barack Obama about 45. Her chances for a Democratic candidacy remain small though. Humanitainment.com, known for The Bush Tapes, made the YouTube hit “Baracky: The Movie” which gained about 700.000 views since it was posted two weeks ago. (Source: BN/DeStem)

4. Dove Onslaught(er)

Last year Unilever introduced the successor to the very successful Dove Evolution viral; Dove Onslaught, featuring a 7-year-old girl with the message “Talk to your daughter before the beauty industry does”. Shortly after the release “Campaign For A Commercial-Free Childhood” reacted to the viral with the “A message from Unilever” video. Now Greenpeace joined their campaign against Unilever. According to the organization the company buys palm oil from suppliers in Indonesia who destroy the region’s forests. Greenpeace claims 98 percent of Ondonesia’s lowland forests will be destroyed by the time Azizah, the young girl in the video, turns 25. (Source: Elsevier, Adrants)

5. Unsubscribe Waterboarding

As part of the ‘Unsubscribe-me‘ campaign human rights organization Amnesty International made the above video. The video is a 90 second clip about the notorious practice of waterboarding. President Bush says waterboarding is an acceptable ‘enhanced interrogation technique’. Amnesty International says it’s torture. Off line the video can be seen in 50 British cinemas from May 9th. On the Unsubscribe-me website you can see a ‘making of‘ as well. (Source: Nu.nl, Communicatie Online)

6. Discovery Channel: I Love the World

Earth Day is one of two different observances, both held annually during spring in the northern hemisphere, and autumn in the southern hemisphere. These are intended to inspire awareness of and appreciation for the Earth’s environment. The United Nations celebrates an Earth Day each year on the March equinox, a tradition which was founded by peace activist John McConnell in 1969.

Full service marketing agency 72andSunny, based in Amsterdam and Los Angeles, created the “I Love the World” spot for Discovery Channel. Bloggers around the world saw the catchy song as the perfect hymn for Earth Day and posted en masse. The video got over 300.000 YouTube views in just two weeks time. (Source: Wikipedia)

7. Untooning Jessica Rabbit

Jax Pixeloo (pixeloo.blogspot.com) professionally uses Adobe’s Photoshop on a daily bases, but that didn’t gave him the satisfaction he needed. So he found his outlet in giving cartoon figures a realistic character. After Homer Simpson and Super Mario he now worked out Roger Rabbit’s love, Jessica Rabbit. (Source: Jorn Wemmenhove)

8. Creme Egg: Mouse Trap

Partizan Lab and Publicis London created a series of stop-motion videos for Creme Egg, a brand of chocolate egg produced by Cadbury Schweppes. The Mouse Trap video is the last episode and also comes as a special edition.

9. The Arm & The Street

MotorRijder Magazine, a Belgian magazine for motorcyclists, tests new motorcycles and clothing for their drivers. Amsterdam based agency Rich, previously known as LG&F, made the very bloody spot “The arm and the street”. (Source: Ads of the World)

10. Fair Trade with Max Havelaar

Max Havelaar France made the above viral video to create more awareness around fair trade. The video has been viewed about 45.000 times since it was posted on Dailymotion a week ago.