Popular Chinese social network RenRen (人人网) has remixed Chinese Canadian film actor and fallen pop icon Edison Chen (陈冠希) into their internet commercial.
Edison Chen in RenRen commercial. Watch this video on YouTube
Edison Chen, a leading actor in Hong Kong appearing in films such as Infernal Affairs (later re-made as The Departed) and The Dark Knight, shocked the Asian world in 2008, when a total of approximately 1,300 explicit photographs with some of the biggest movie and recording stars in Hong Kong and the Chinese world were distributed to Chinese language websites, forums and chatrooms.
Last year fastfood group Domino’s Pizza had a tumultuous public relations nightmare, when two employees from a North Carolina Domino’s Pizza franchise posted several gross videos on YouTube on April 15, 2009, which gained worldwide notoriety. Bloggers uncovered the identities of the employees, who later were arrested and jailed for food tampering.
Domino’s USA President Patrick Doyle response on YouTube in April 2009
The vast YouTube community was revulsed seeing the videos, yet watched anyway. Within a day the clips had been viewed about 200,000 times. The videos were reposted on other sites. By April 15, the number of views soared to nearly 1 million.
Harbin beer (哈尔滨啤酒) is one of the popular beers along Tsingtao Beer (青島啤酒), Yanjing Beer (燕京啤酒) and Zhujiang beer (珠江啤酒) in China. The beer company is founded in 1900 by the Russian national Ulubulevskij in the city of Harbin, and is now part of beer giant Anheuser-Busch InBev. Harbin is nicknamed “Ice City” cause of its long cold winter and its beautiful display of ice sculptures in December and January.
Harbin beer ice sculpture. Watch this video on YouTube.
On December 24 the above video, entitled “零下34度！年终巨献！惊爆你的眼球……!” was uploaded to the popular Chinese video sharing site Youku (优酷网). In the clip four Chinese citizens create an ice sculpture of Harbin’s Saint Sophia Cathedral by pouring Harbin beer on a square at a temperature of 34 degrees below zero or minus 29 Fahrenheit.
Organizing For America: Barack Obama
Organizing For America (OFA), the successor organization to ‘Obama for America’, has created a personalized video card featuring President Barack Obama, as well as ordinary Democrats from around the country, thanking supporters for their dedication.
“Brilliant, innovative, smart yet simple, genius, outside the box, awesome, excellent, unconventional” are just some of the terms used in many blog postings and headlines to describe the new IKEA Facebook campaign, designed by Swedish agency Forsman & Bodenfors, to promote the opening of its new IKEA store in Mälmo.
IKEA’s showcase video, viewed 115,000 times on YouTube since November 18
Without breaking the bank on exorbitant budgets the agency managed to create a ripple effect of buzz and engagement, that would not spread just throughout Sweden, but throughout Europe and beyond.
Officially announced Monday, but the Elf Yourself team were so kind to give you, our ViralBlog readers, a first look at the new Elf Yourself commercial. Hundreds of Elf Yourself elves came out of the subway and a double-decker bus in New York on November 3rd and took over Union Square and started dancing in their green tunic, striped pants and an elf hat on. Their message: Elf Yourself!
About a week ago, I wrote an article about the history of Elf Yourself and asked the question: Will Elf Yourself return in 2009 again? On the OfficeMax site, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube and Facebook all kind of hints appeared of a possible return. And 12 hours ago, 12 o’clock midnight US time, Elf Yourself 4.0 is live again! Just like last year OfficeMax teamed up with JibJab.
So what’s new this year? There are two new elf dances! In addition to “Disco Elves”, “Country Elves”, and “Elf Classic”, you can choose to model your creation off the “Hip-Hop Elves” or “Singing Elves” dances. The “Charleston Elves” won’t be coming back this year.
The pumpkins come out, the days grow shorter, the weather cools, and there’s no mistaking that the holiday season is upon us. Time to turn yourself, family, friends and pets into hilarious dancing elves again!? Over the past three holiday seasons, the elves of OfficeMax have become not just an annual holiday tradition, but a popular culture phenomenon.
OfficeMax first launched “Elf Yourself” for the 2006 holidays and has turned the free e-greeting site into an annual holiday tradition returning each season with new bells and whistles for the public to enjoy and spread holiday cheer. In 2007, ElfYourself.com attracted 193 million visits in six weeks to become the most viral initiative on record. A look back at each campaign, the results and lessons learned.
Google Wave is the web’s hottest new property, which allows users to swap messages, video, pictures, gadgets and links with one another. Millions of people out there are in fact stalking their lucky friends for a Google Wave invite.
Joe Sabia of Whirled Interactive from LA had been toying with Wave for just 24 hours and thought “we gotta do something with this…”. Together with his good friend Scott Chan he created the following highly entertaining video:
Joe came up with the idea 3 days ago, because he wasn’t satisfied with the current Google Wave videos. Joe Sabia sums up the reasons: “a) some don’t show the actual product, b) they sometimes fail to connect the product to people who don’t really understand the purpose and c) they could garner more excitement”.
The document was even discussed at the Allen & Co Sun Valley conference in Idaho, which brings together business leaders, political figures, philanthropists and media executives, like Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, Eric Schmidt and Rupert Murdoch.
Morgan Stanley decided to publish the three-page analysis, due to its “clear and thought-provoking insights”.
