I was playing around with Google Video the other day, and I couldn't help but notice the top rating clip - a 3 minute epic enticingly entitled "Webcam Girls Go Wild". It was kind of suprising to see something like that there - considering how famously conservative the 'Do No Evil' crew are about adult content. Purely in the interests of science and humankind, I clicked play. And got a surprise.
The opening sequence was amusing. A nubile young girl entreats a mysterious video cam viewer to take her phone number, and begins revealing each digit sequentially - scribbled on a different part of her body. Before we get too many numbers in, the clip turns into a high production singing and dancing carnivale of supermodels jumping up and down on the screen - at which point you realise that the whole thing is not a five dollar escapade but rather an ad for a site called Clickmore.com. I went through, expecting an adult links operator, and was once again suprised to find that it was in fact a viral offshoot of the Lynx clicker marketing campaign featuring Ben Affleck.
Aside from the depressing fact that most viral campaigns rely on half naked women for attention - there are a couple of interesting things about all of this. The first is that hosted video platforms such as Google and YouTube are becoming much more effective for the discovery and dissemination of viral ads. Not only do you benefit from the virtuous cycle of publicity once you get onto the top 100 list, but as a marketer you can also monitor just how many downloads and impressions your clip has had - which is hard to do with a decentralised email clip.
The other, more subtle observation, is the importance of authenticity. At the moment there are a whole host of big brand marketers literally spending millions on creating viral ads that are designed to look like they cost peanuts. David Droga's viral campaigns for Burger King and Marc Ecko are a case in point. Like grainy black and white photographs - there is something compelling and immersive about material that doesn't look too produced. It could be real, even if it is obviously not. And that makes for a more interesting suspension of disbelief. Another good example are the Mastercard priceless ads. As anyone with a friend in their address book with a penchant for forwarding useless information would know - the ones created by users were much ruder and consequently funnier than anything the official creative agency came up with.
Which really goes to my big point. With a level playing field in production values - the focus on viral campaigns is now ideas not spending power.
That means the world's greatest creative director right now is not sitting in a corner office on Madison Avenue, but in basement with a cheap video camera, a copy of iMovie and a couple of crazy ideas. But these days - with global audiences only a click away - they only need to be crazy enough to work.
