Animal Killing Viral Commercials Buzz Worthy?

Do you remember the pigeon killing viral commercial of Ford Ka? It gave tremendous buzz, but off course no real pigeon was harmed in the video.

Chrysler recently introduced the Dodge Nitro in The Netherlands electrocuting and BBQ-ing a dog. It gave enormous buzz around the globe. Maybe tasteless but again no dog was really harmed.

The buzz around Dodge exploded in 2 days and many blogs and traditional media wrote about the viral commercial. The Chrsyler Vice President even had to explain the press Chrysler was sorry. And the viral commercial, created by BBDO was immediately banned from YouTube. At Jalopnik you can still see the banned Dodge Nitro viral commercial.

So killing fake animals seems to be a proven formula for buzz worthy virals? What will be next? A Wrangler Jeep as non spot in the Battle of Kruger video? This amazing user created video was watched over 19 Million times already at YouTube!

I am 100% sure I heard the CEO of BBDO say in Cannes 2006: “I don’t believe in user created video, the quality is simply not good enough”. As agency founder I understand, he would rather like to sell you his expensive art directors.

But, most viral commercials, even without that beautiful South American sunlight (a must have in TV commercials?), are much more compelling than many expensive TV commercials that we massively skip, zap away from or block with our TiVo. So I do believe in user created content and video’s! How about you?