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20/06/2009 by
5182 views

Asics: Imagine Pamela Without Plastic Surgery

ASICS, a Japanese athletic equipment company, which produces professional footwear and sports equipment designed for various sport disciplines has released 4 humorous videos in the Netherlands, as part of What’s a Left Without a Right, an advertising campaign promoting the SportStyle leisure footwear range campaign.

Part 1 What If: Pamela

The (viral) video campaign, released last month, revolves around the question “What if?”. Imagine Michael Knight without Kitt, Pamela Anderson without plastic surgery or Lennon without McCartney. Without their perfect match their lives could have turned out to be rather less successful …

Part 2 What if: Lennon without McCartney

Part 3 What If: Knight Rider without KITT

Part 4 What If: Johan Cruyff had pronunciation lessons

Part 1 with “Pamela Anderson”, launched on May 19, is the most popular one of the series with over 150,000 views (generated on YouTube, 123video.nl and Kewego). Part 2, also launched on May 19, follows with 60,000 views (generated on YouTube and 123video.nl). Part 3, launched on May 26, received 35,000 views (mainly from YouTube). Part 4, launched also on May 26, with Dutch soccer legend Johan Cruijff is watched the least with just 7,000 views on YouTube and 123video.nl.

Although the videos were also uploaded/duplicated to Yahoo Video, MyVideo.nl and Zideo.nl, these videosharing sites perform very poorly.

The videos watched together in total of over 250,000 times have yielded good uptake in the Dutch and Belgian blogosphere, like Flabber, VKmag, Kladblog, Skoften, Biertijd, Loodzwaar, ZV Magazine, AttuWorld and TasteLikePizza.

Promoting 4 videos can be difficult and needs a careful thought viral strategy plan, whereas not all videos tend to get uptake, due to missing viral elements and bloggers only embed the best one or two videos. Viral strategies to promote more than one video for a campaign can be: a big bang strategy (all at once), one by one (every week or two weeks a new part) or in batches. In this case with Part 1 (60% of the total views), Part 2 (24% of the total views), Part 3 (14% of the total views) and Part 4 (3% of the total views), did rather well. The video views are spread more evenly, indicating (almost) all movies are liked, also when looking at the ratings and comments.

Compared to the number of video views with some of the most succesfull viral cases in the Netherlands, such as X-Travel, Hacker Max Cornelisse and Dutch Cybersex viral, the Asics campaign misses high international uptake to perform as well.

The “What if?” concept is inexhaustible and can be applied to e.g. Obama, Esmee Denters, Michael Jordan etc. I personally think, that if the actors were just more look-a-like and the videos less budget, the campaign could perform better. Another idea for the next series, is let the public decide (crowdsource), who they want to see next.