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25/12/2009 by
19605 views

Viral Friday: Best Viral Videos Of 2009

Viral Friday is the weekly viral video chart of ViralBlog, showing the 5 12 most popular viral videos, commercials, games or user-generated videos, carefully selected and ranked by popularity, viral impact & spread.
ViralFriday

The year is really coming to an end and on this last Friday of 2009 we look back at all virals we have written about in our weekly ViralFriday. We have made our own selection of the best viral per month. Not only the number of views but also impact, awareness, coolness and all sorts of elements were taken into consideration to create this list of 12 best virals.

We have seen many good virals and also a lot of ‘not so good’ ones. Either way, we believe the power of viral videos is enormous and can be entertaining, fun, impressive and even some times learning you new things. We hope you like this top 12 virals of 2009.

Do you want to see this week year’s list from January to December? Go on then, and have a look! We’d like to hear your opinion about the virals. Have fun!

Get our ViralBlog asset: the Viral Friday Widget! By default the widget shows you the latest Viral Friday, but it’ll also show you the seven most recent postings on ViralBlog.

January: The T-Mobile Dance

Saatchi & Saatchi London made the above ad for T-Mobile. They obviously watched the ‘Frozen Grand Central’ video from Improv Everywhere to get inspired. The flashmob consisting of 400 dancers took place at Liverpool Street Station last January 15th and is called ‘Life’s worth sharing’.
This year has been full of flashmobs. Michael Jackson Tribute, No Pants Subway Ride, MC Hammer and Search For Maria to name a few. As we wrote before, a flashmob can be a viral success.

February: David After Dentist

February saw the rise of David, the son of YouTube user booba1234 who uploaded a video of his 7 year old son who just had an extra tooth removed in the summer of 2008. Booba1234 brought his camera because David was so nervous before and he wanted him to see the before and after. Posting the video on YouTube resulted in massive uptake with over 8.5 million views, 21,251 comments, 31,170 ratings and about 1,250 (!) spoofs/responses in 14 days on YouTube alone! Currently the video has been watched almost 40 million times. “Dad, is this real life?” David queries from the back seat of the family car. “This is real life,” his dad reassures him.

March: Extreme Sheep LED Art

Samsung is again successful with a viral. This time with a flock of sheep, a bunch of leds, some well trained sheep dogs and fast-motion video. The Extreme Sheep LED art needs little explanation. Watch and enjoy (again).

April: Susan Boyle On Britain’s Got Talent

April has been the deliverer of 2009 most viral video. With over 82 million views on YouTube and many millions of views on other portals, Susan Boyle has taken the pie. In August 2008, Boyle applied for an audition for the third series of Britain’s Got Talent and was accepted after a preliminary audition in Glasgow.

When Boyle first appeared on Britain’s Got Talent at the city’s Clyde Auditorium, she said that she aspired to become a musical theatre singer ‘as successful as’ Elaine Paige. Boyle sang “I Dreamed a Dream” from Les Misérables in the first round of the third series of Britain’s Got Talent, which was watched by over 10 TV million viewers when it aired on 11 April 2009.

She stole the hearts of the jury and millions of people around the world and global interest in Boyle was triggered by the contrast between her powerful voice and her plain appearance on stage. The juxtaposition of the audience’s first impression of her with the standing ovation she received after her performance led to an international media and Internet response.

May: Ken Block Gymkhana Two – The Infomercial

Ken Block is a person with two passions. His shoe label, DC Shoes, from which he is the co-founder and his professional racing career as a rally driver. In order to promote his favorite racing sport to the world, the unknown rally sport called Gymkhana, he created a highly viral video to show cast his own brand, his favorite sport and his sponsor: Subaru.
The video is simply highly entertaining: a beautiful car, slow motion shots, explosives and speed are elements that catch the attention of the viewer. Everyone loves to watch eyecandy. Which makes it a strong branded entertainment video, which people love to watch. Even if it lasts for over seven minutes.

June: Kobe & LeBron

To promote Nike Basketball and the NBA playoffs. Nike’s sponsorship of the NBA playoffs feature most valued players Kobe Bryant and LeBron James as puppets goofing around behind the scenes. Nike made several videos featuring the puppet versions of Kobe Bryant and LeBron James. ‘Three Rings‘ and ‘Unstoppable Game Tape‘ are two of them, but the most views go to ‘Chalk’ (which you can see above). In under two weeks the Chalk video got over 1.4 million views.

Nike has put the original video on private, thus removing the chance of creating more awareness and views. We at ViralBlog believe in the long tail of virals, hopefully Nike will understand this as well.

July: JK Wedding Entrance Dance

Jill and Kevin Heinz decided that they wouldn’t do the traditional walk down the aisle, but that would dance in on their own wedding ceremony on June 20th in St. Paul Minnesota church. They got some family and friends to lead them to the altar on the tunes of Chris Brown’s ‘Forever’. To all the others waiting for the bridal party to enter, the dancing was a big surprise. Jill and Kevin placed their video on YouTube for family and friends to see, but has already reached over millions! Even Good Morning America covered Jill and Kevin’s story.

Jill told the television show that the dance was her idea: “I grew up dancing and I danced in college. It was something I always wanted to do, I wanted to dance in on the wedding.” And Kevin jumped in on board. The Wedding Entrance has been a massive viral success topping 34 million views. Many responses and, as expected, spoofs such as a JK Divorce Entrance Dance. The Wedding Entrance Dance was performed on music from Chris Brown and was even put on private due to copyrights, but Google made it monetizable again. Either way, we wish Jill and Kevin all the best and much love.

August: Rymdreglage – 8-bit trip

What combines Lego, stop motion animation and a tribute to 8-bit video games all in one place? The answer is this 8-Bit Trip music video. Tomas Redigh spent 1,500 hours using LEGO to animate a song by Daniel Larsson. You get the feeling you traveled back to the 1980s and relived an entire youth all over again in the span of about three and a half minutes.
Pong, Mario Bros., Raccoon Mario, Bubble Bobble. It’s all pretty much there, backed by an unmistakably 8-bit beat. Amazing stuff.

September: Tour De France (Remi Gaillard)

Remi Gaillard has a reputation for performing pranks, having fun and giving people a hard time, and has become very popular in doing so. His viral video from September is another great one. Gaillard is seen playing a prank on three cyclists. He sets up a huge crowd and a finish line, tricking the cyclists into thinking they are participating in the Tour de France. Journalists, a trophy and cups of water give the prank an even more realistic touch.

Needless to say, the ‘racers’ could not find the words to comment on their achievement. Do watch more Remi’s pranks on his site.

October: “Balloon Boy” Falcon Henne

October marks the success (or failure, wherever your preference lies) of Balloon Boy Falcon Henne. Emergency Services in Colorado received a distress call from father saying his son was lost and probably stuck in a hot-air-balloon. America was worried sick into thinking that the 6 year old Falcon Henne aka ‘Balloon Boy’ was on a runaway balloon flying over Colorado, but as it turned out he was just hiding in the attic. In this video the ‘Balloon Boy’ is on Larry King Live together with his family. He admits hearing his parents calling and 40 sec in the video he mutters ‘We did this for the show’.

Besides a lot of people worrying sick, this video generated 2.4 million views that week. The latest development of this story is that the father of Balloon Boy has to hit the slammer. There you have it, your 15 minutes of fame.

November: Heineken Knows The Signs – Part II

Heineken launched their second global responsible drinking campaign titled “KnowTheSigns” in November. With their tag line “Enjoy Heineken Responsibly” they would like to encourage young people to enjoy a good night out, but be aware of the signs people start to show when they’ve had one too many to drink.
Here you can see what might happen if one of your wedding guests has one too many to drink and crashes at a wedding. The video created massive viral success (over 3 million views at the moment in a couple of weeks) and discussed at MSNBC.

December: Christmas Light Hero

What do you get when you mix a Christmas Light show with Guitar Hero? Yes, Christmas Light Hero! Ric Turner, a former Disney ‘imagineer’ and special effects specialist, turned his yard into a game of Guitar Hero, built out of 21,268 lights and LEDs, that plays Eric Johnson’s “Cliffs of Dover”.

 

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