Diesel: SFW XXX Viral Porny Party Promotion
The Viral Factory collated clips of the 80’s porn in a humorous new viral to celebrate Diesel’s 30th anniversary. The viral uses animation to block out the rude bits, creating various cartoon interpretations of the actors’ movements. Actors are seen shaking maracas, playing the harmonica, riding horses and eating a banana…
The viral is titled SFW XXX (short for “safe for work”), the opposite of NSFW or “not safe for work” - an acronym used to tag porn online and promotes a series of parties being held to celebrate Diesel’s anniversary.
I think the creation of the viral clip is brilliant. It shows lots of guts from Diesel again. However, I feel The Viral Factory has made a huge mistake in their seeding strategy. They uploaded the viral video to YouTube first . Then started the initial seeding with the video that was hosted at YouTube.
But since YouTube had banned the viral commercial (video no longer available) many blogs and social sites had already embedded the Diesel video, that showed: video is no longer available…
So all bloggers that got a seeding e-mail from Viral Factory, and liked the Diesel porny viral, started seeding this YouTube Diesel viral in their blog, by using the YouTube embed link. Within a week many blogs were showing a video saying: no longer available 
And here you see how important it is to have a smart seeding strategy. The Viral Factory should have known this would happen and should have hosted the viral commercial on their own platform or put this “source” commercial in another platform than YouTube.
Seeding experts know that YouTube bans these kind of ads and that is killing in the viral incubation period (the first 20 days of a campaign) to have everywhere: this video is no longer available. That is simply NOT the best way to ignite a viral campaign. It’s NOT the way to get massive spread and NOT the way to reach millions of people in the target audience.
If The Viral Factory is using a smart viral tracking they will see what mistake they made. And Diesel will see it too. It’s such a pity since the viral commercial is awesome. After 2 weeks YouTube has opened up again and the video is again available. See YouTube below.
So my message is: if you create a porny, sexy or edgy viral commercials, make sure to create a smart seeding strategy and use an advanced viral tracking technology. Be aware that the initial seed should not always be YouTube!
I hope a learning for The Viral Factory and many other agencies. But on the creative part, many agencies and brands can learn from The Viral Factory, since the viral is liked by Diesel’s target audience.
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M!hai @ Freshome October 7th, 2008 at 10:28
One thing that I don’t understand is how this ad relates to diesel ?
Igor Beuker October 7th, 2008 at 11:30
@M!hai
This viral commercial promotes a Diesel party! That is the relation. As you might know, Diesel throws great parties every now and then.. like Diesel U-Music and now this anniversary party.
Cheers
Igor
Brennan October 8th, 2008 at 22:21
A) I’m amazed they convinced a company to do this… some of our clients are afraid of Twitter.
B) I’m SO glad you pointed the seeding issue out. This is exactly why you should make viral or social media efforts with a good company (not that viral factory isn’t), but I’m amazed they didn’t foresee the seeding issue. They missed out on ALL of the secondary seeds pushing the viral effect for their client. They had a GREAT video (for the purposes) that probably experienced 10% of the results it should have due to a simple seeding issue.
Igor October 9th, 2008 at 01:07
@Brennan
A) Amazing huh. Most of our clients think social bookmarking is people sharing books
B) You seem to know the drill! But you’re so right.. missed opportunity.
Cheers
Armando Alves October 10th, 2008 at 02:41
I’ve pointed the seeding mistake the second day the video was out. And another side effect is that some unscrupulous users upload these banned video themselves to video monetizing services trying to get some bucks.
One of the first steps to a global seeding strategy is to create channels on all major video services, before uploading.