Top 5 April Fool Digital Jokes

1. Bing

This is what happened when you searched for ‘Google’ on Bing:

2. YouTube – ‘YouTube’s ready to select a winner’

YouTube released a video saying the service would be coming to an end and they will be picking the “best video”:

3. Google

Google were to introduce a search-by-smell feature called Google “nose”

4. Google Treasure Map

Google added a new feature onto the Google Maps page, allowing for the World to be viewed in a ‘Treasure Map’ format.

5. Virgin Atlantic

Virgin Atlantic launches a glass-bottomed plane

Mashable created a list of the 2013 pranks, which can be found here:

The Ultimate Roundup of 2013′s Biggest April Fools’ Day Pranks

Facebook updates

Facebook’s messenger app has added VOIP which has now become available in the UK, following on from the US and Canada.

The option appears on active Messenger users’ profile page as ‘Free call’. I have checked this and it has not arrived on my screen yet but I imagine it will be rolled out soon. The call will be placed via WiFi or 3G.

Although the idea is great in theory in practice it will take a while before it takes off, why would you use an app to call and text when there are plenty already out there?

Will you be using it?

Facebook Phone

Screenshots of a phone rumoured to be announced by Facebook has been leaked ahead of an event on Thursday.

 The hardware will be produced by Android and have dedicated ‘Facebook’ style graphics and homepage.

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The ad, created by Wielden + Kennedy of London, demonstrates the brand’s understanding that “silly stuff” is important to their users. So important, in fact, that they’re hinging their advertising strategy on people’s desire to find and share new “silly stuff”. And so far,  it seems to be working a treat. At the time of writing, the video is getting on for 3million YouTube views on the official 3 YouTube channel, has been giffed and hit the front page of Reddit, had 662,958 Facebook and 18,118 Twitter shares, and been featured 165 blog posts (according to the Unruly Video Viral Video Chart).

The genius of the video is that it has much more in common with your average viral video than most television adverts, focusing more on entertaining the viewer with a fun, short film than on bashing them over the head with a brand message. In a minute-long ad, the brand and message appear only in the final 5 seconds. And a simple message it is too “we know you like this stuff, we’re the network to come to to make sure you can get it all the time”, the implication being that other networks are less focused on online connectivity and download speeds.

But while it has gone viral it is still, at its heart, an advert. Of course it’s not the first advert to go viral, but it’s the first advert I can remember that was clearly designed to go viral, and then went as a result of openly referencing and imitating viral videos that had gone before it. We’re into Inception territory here, folks.

Will we look back on this as a watershed moment? Will brand managers be taking notes here on where to go next with their advertising strategies?

Am I as bad as the rest, co-opting popular memes because they add that hint of “silliness” that might get you to share this page?

I’ll leave that for you to decide.

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Text version:

Social media became even bigger in 2012:

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Just like the mainstream music industry will often ‘borrow’ from underground trends, television advertising is now taking from the internet. The aforementioned Skittles advert doesn’t overtly sell the product, it just does what a good YouTube video does. It makes people think “This is a laugh, I’ll tell my friends about it”, covertly planting a kind of positive reinforcement in viewers.

Adverts with a loose connection – or no relation at all – to the product aren’t all that new, of course, but it’s undeniable that there has been an increase in them over the last few years. Two of the biggest examples are Muller’s 2010 clip about a cow who wants to be a horse, and Cadbury’s Dairy Milk gorilla. Again, these clips don’t scream ‘BUY ME NOW, YOU TRAMPS!’, they instead let the viewer know they’re around should they be needed. And this softly, softly approach does pay off, with both Muller and Cadbury reporting increases in profit in the period after the adverts aired.

The Dairy Milk gorilla and Muller adverts also feature animals prominently. And, as can be attested by pretty anyone who’s ever been online, animals are pretty popular on the internet. Cats, in particular, are all over the bloody place. This is one of the most famous examples:

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Be bad:
Cries of “OMG is this for real?” met Rebecca Black’s single ‘Friday’ as it hit YouTube in early 2011. Its combination of bad lyrics, cheesy video and auto-tuned vocals made this prime fodder to be lapped up by the ‘so bad it’s good’ contingent, as it soon swept through social media channels to achieve 30 million views within a week of release.

Like most successful viral videos, ‘Friday’ soon took on a life of its own, ripe for parody and a constant water-cooler topic. By creating something so outrageously bad, the video’s producers hit upon something that simply had to be talked about, if only for all the wrong reasons. As one Billboard magazine columnist noted: “’Friday’ is something that simply must be seen and heard to be fully appreciated.”

Comedian George Cottier simply confused people on the way to his 60,000 views over October. His video ‘Top 100 Worst Nazis’ marries authentic and made up names with authentic and made up pictures to create a montage of German officials that could almost be real.

Plenty of people didn’t know what to think of the video, and took to YouTube’s comment sections to express opinions such as: “Te sad uploader of this footage has apparently nothing better to do, or is to simple/minded to create at least a top 100 WITH CORRECT NAMES and relevant pictures. Next, your list is based on? butchers? doctors? get a life .. and you know why.. GeorgeCotterberg.”

For every detractor sharing (and linking to) their outrage, there was a fan calling it “gold” and passing it on to someone with a similar sense of humour. In tandem, the clicks built up.

In 2004, Gary Brolsma set up his webcam and mimed the song Dragostea din tei by Eastern European group O-Zone. He then posted it on Newsgrounds and within four months it had been viewed four million times, picking up the name ‘Numa Numa’ after the song’s chorus. The video of Brolsma dancing is one of the most watched viral videos of all-time, perhaps because it shares a moment people all over the world have enjoyed in private for years.

The difference between the Numa Numa video, Star Wars kid and the ‘It’s Still Real To Me’ wrestling fan is that the former two have a proper charm to them – everyone has danced to songs and acted out films in private. The wrestling fan, however, appeals to a darker curiosity and makes us cringe. People had to see this, even through their fingers.

David Wills attended a wrestling conference with hero wrestler Terry Funk on the panel. From there, Wills asked a question. He later explained: “I choked and started crying and said ‘Thanks, Mr. Funk for saying what needed to be said.’ I was taken a little aback by this myself as I didn’t expect to tear up. I started stammering with nervousness and instead of making a point about the deaths in wrestling what came out was ‘I don’t want to see another one of these.’ I then yelled out ‘It’s still real to me, damn it!’

Marketing companies the world over would do anything to have a 100 per cent, full-proof way to make their videos go viral. However, while they can never be sure of what will work and what won’t, by being able to relate, and by appealing to our senses of humour, compassion and pity, they can at the very least make an impression on someone.

Personally, I really want this guy to be the next viral superstar…

We’re holding a debate about viral on the 14th November 2011 in Manchester. In the run up to the event we’ve also got a series of guests posts looking at viral marketing. Have a look over at The Feed’s website to find out more about the debate and get tickets.

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1. Old Spice – Normally adverts for body washes and shampoos are quite irritating and full of women swishing their hair all over the place (It must be a nightmare vacuuming the floor after they’ve been filming the adverts – hairs everywhere). I’m not sure if it’s because Isaiah Mustafa never stops talking for a moment and never breaks out of the slightly sinister grin, which makes it even funnier, but I just know that if I had a man, I would buy him Old Spice so he could smell like a man, man. Silver fish hand catch!
2. Tippexperience – I’m actually quite impressed with what they’ve done. The first video is ‘A hunter shoots a bear’, which leads onto a Youtube page where part of the video name has been ‘tippexed’ out, so you can change the name of the video, which changes the story. Though I have found that typing some words in comes up with odd results, or just links to some of the other story options, I have yet to find an idea they haven’t thought of.
3. Will it Blend? – An advert for Blendtec blenders, where various different things are put into their blender to see if it will blend. Not normal kitchen objects like peppers and herbs, but weird things like glowsticks. Just so you know – iPads DO blend, so don’t be tempted.
4. TMobile flashmob – It’s fun to watch, although I think it would be quite unnerving to be walking through a train station and suddenly be blocked by a crowd of dancing people. But it is quite good at showing you what’s possible when you connect with people – which, of course, T Mobile are only too happy to help with.
5. Wolves in Moscow – at first, people thought that the clips of wolves running wild in Moscow and attacking people were real. It turns out, after some incredibly sceptical people went through the video frame by frame, that it is in fact part of a campaign for Eristoff vodka. I’m not quite sure wolves have to do with vodka though.

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Saturday night saw a young girl by the name of Cher Lloyd audition on the hugely popular show the X Factor, as hundreds of them have already done before her. She approached the stage, visibly nervous and rather oddly dressed and blew the crowd away belting out Keri Hilson’s version of US rapper Soulja Boy’s ‘Turn my swag on’ (yes, I have no idea what this means either…). Now listen up, you may hate the manufactured band scene or Simon Cowell’s ridiculous hair but this girl from Malvern, Cher Lloyd, is 16 years old and has the attitude of Beyonce.

The interesting aspect of this video is how it has taken off on a viral basis. The BBC reported that this years X Factor opened with 11.1 million viewers, a significant proportion of the population in the UK, and it is one of the most well known and highest viewed programs on UK TV. For Cher Lloyd to appear for just 5 minutes on the Saturday night show, whilst they are still in auditions, and not only appear in her very own This Morning interview by Monday, but also rack up a rapidly rising view count of her audition video (rocketing from 700,000 to well over 1.5 million in the last 24 hours). This harks back to the ‘Susan Boyle effect’ that we seem to now experience more and more often in our lives, a sign that the shareability of content is proliferating to such an extent that every second [not hour or day, as it once was] is essential for creating buzz and should be a real lesson for the PR agencies, especially when looking towards the future…

Even though the viral figures, such as the amount of times it has been ‘shared’ on Facebook, for Cher Lloyd’s audition were only picked up today (and therefore may be a little ropey) they’re already showing that it has attracted nearly 7,000 comments and has been shared on Facebook over 11,000 times; all in less than 72 hours since it first aired on TV! I agree, this doesn’t (and probably now won’t) match up to Susan Boyle’s audition video viral success seen last year, but in my opinion, there are two lessons to be learned here:

1. Buzz is now generated at a much faster rate than it has ever been before. PR and buzz monitoring agencies should now deal in minutes, not hours and days.
2. The ‘net genners’ are leading the way in sharing content, which in itself is an incredibly powerful tool, not only gaining the potential to increase brand awareness and raise profile but, as we can see in this and Susan Boyle’s case, creating careers; even if they don’t last that long…

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Antony Worrall Thompson has a new range of products produced by Breville, and to encourage pre-Christmas sales, we’re advertising the campaign with a mixture of in-stream, text, click to play and promoted video adverts within YouTube and the Content network. The project has been an interesting one, and because of the recognition and how-to format, we’ve had a really positive response so far.

Antony demonstrates his products with a little plug towards the start of each video, then goes on to guide you through simple Christmas recipes. He covers the essentials, for example turkey, stuffing and roast potatoes as well as some interesting alternatives to the traditional Christmas feast, with Salmon Steaks With Parmesan and an Aromatic Cabbage recipe.

The nice thing about the campaign is that it’s gently commercial, and the recipes are in a similar format to the TV shows that Antony normally appears in, so the content is useful and easily watchable. This makes seeding the campaign and encouraging engagement a piece of cake.

Here are some of the videos from the Christmas recipe series:

If you want to see the rest in the series, pop over to the Breville AWT YouTube channel.

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http://www.k3scs.com/the-factory

For us this episode is going to be particularly challenging as we have to come up with some new angles to help generate new interest. The Factory story is no longer new but we have come up with a top secret idea which we think will bring some new fans to the series. Once we have put it in to operation we may share it with you guys in a blog post.

We hope you like the new video and that you will join in with some social media voting.
Thanks

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[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bB_1npblVYY[/youtube]

For us we are particularly excited about this episode as we are going to be trying some new marketing techniques. With the first two episodes we looked at target lists and specific social media sites such as Stumble Upon. Stumble Upon was key to us because of the user base it has. Stumble Upon’s user base is predominantly tech savvy and of the right demographic for our video. Again with this video we will look to Stumble Upon but we will also be trying some new techniques.

This time round we are going to experiment with Facebook and its advertising system. The system has come under heavy criticism however it does offer extremely cheap clicks and more importantly target very specific demographics. The user base for Facebook is also extremely high and we hope that conversations about the video will be generated on the site. We will also be looking at various content networks as this allows us to get the video placed on ERP and IT related sites. This type of targeting could prove extremely powerful in getting people to sign up to the series.

It will certainly be interesting to see the results of our new approach. If successful we can adopt this approach for the subsequent videos.

The video above is of course only the teaser for the full episode which comes out at a later date. If you head on over to the Factory’s mini site and sign up you will be emailed a link to the full version.

We hope you like it and please feel free to leave your comments on YouTube and Stumble etc.

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