There are exactly one hundred million billion new viral marketing campaigns seeded every 10 minutes - the vast majority are completely dire and destined to fail. So what separates success from failure? Well, the best appear to exhibit similar patterns and by using these patterns in your own campaigns you could be on your way to a free buffet and a drunken snog at next Summer’s Revolution Awards.
If you’re smart you’re probably thinking this is all very formulaic and un-creative. Well, consider the following. The drumming gorilla is just a remake of an ad for a shop called West49 in the US. The director Juan Cabral simply used a pattern where he recognised potential and executed it beautifully. The true genius of this idea is his audacity in linking it to something utterly random like a cheap chocolate brand. Juan got a black D&AD pencil for his efforts.
DISCLAIMER: Please bear in mind that absolutely no genuine empirical or meaningful data was used in this study so don’t blame me if your viral lands you in the dole queue. Remember, 90% of this stuff is in the execution. Juan didn’t just put a drummer in a gorilla suit, he personally trained a silver-back gorilla for 3 years to get him to play drums better than Phil Collins, 6 of the rhythm-less beasts had to be ‘let go’ with a lethal injection before he came out with the winning ape. There’s no trickery or CGI - it is pure human endeavour. I’m clearly labouring the point with bare-faced lies but I’m simply stressing that the real trick is in how you use the pattern and the brand in combination.
1. The Brand Master/Slave Bond
Example: John West Tuna
This is a straight-up old-school classic. It’s a no-brainer - you scale a building, you shave your nuts, you fly to the moon and you do all of this to bring to the consumer the finest ingredients, ideas or services that can be found. One famous French cosmetics brand might have 12-year-old divers that swim to the bottom of the ocean to find crushed Jurrasic Pearls, many of which don’t come back but they’ve done it for you because you are worth it! In reality it’s more likely that your client actually does very little for the quality of the product and is actively avoiding the challenge of doing any real work to improve it, hoping that their agency can mask over this little fact. If your product or brand is of a low quality, this is the pattern for you my friend. Clients love this one because it makes them look great. If you’re using sweatshop labour in Indochina, make sure you emphasise the fact that the clothes are hand-stitched by fair young maidens in far off lands. You catch my drift?
2. Brandophilia
Examples: Snickers Kiss, Skittles Rabbit
This is another classic where #1 is reversed so we see the consumer doing obscene and/or comical and/or desperate things in order to get their hands on your wonderful product. This appears to work great for products that are tasty or emotionally stimulating and is often used on a fairly naive and suggestible target market such as children or men.
3. Doomsday Branding
Examples: IKEA Tidy Up
Scaremongery has been a constant favourite in British advertising since the dawn of the TV age. Home cleaning products and health remedies favour this approach because it allows them to scare the shit out of housewives that never paid attention in Chemistry class at school. We see this kind of thing every day - “Clean your toilet with our product or else germs will learn to talk, become obnoxious and criticise your choice of bra”, “See how you’re spreading that lethal chicken juice around your home when you don’t clean your hands properly?” and “See how this beautiful and talented child would have lived had you been driving just 5MPH slower, you bastard!?”. Use this classic wisely.
4. Brand Halo Effect
Example: Honda Cog, Sony Bravia Play Doh or Palline or Foam
This is a recent phenomenon that requires some serious wonga in the KERCHING!! department. The Honda Accord Cog ad from Wieden + Kennedy cost over £3 million - we’re talking blank cheques here. What happens is as follows. A big brand with a large amount of spare cash that they don’t know what to do with hits up a hip agency in London or New York to come up with a totally mentalist campaign and someone senior at said brand has the balls to actually do it (probably because they are fearless and Japanese). The agency thinks of the most mental and agonisingly difficult thing to do, gets some intern to do it and then films everything. They then go to the pub and get trashed on cheeky Vimtos. This is usually pretty good for technology firms that want to appear really clever. And it works great despite the fact that it was actually a shit-hot agency in Soho that came up with the idea, not the lab-coat wearing wonks in the R&D department who spend most of their time testing the sound of closing glove compartments and comparing their beards.
5. Super Hot Product Demo
Examples: Kylie’s Agent Provocateur romp, Anything by Apple, Banned Commercial - Levis, Windows Vista Aero Vs. Linux Ubuntu, Wii Fit
Possibly NSFW (particularly if you work somewhere rubbish).
If you’ve got a really ace product that people already love then it can just speak for itself and you have a really easy job on your hands. Hire Harmone Korine or Vincent Gallo to shoot something really sweet with the product. Apple love this pattern because they just show their product, stick a folksy soundtrack on it and everyone goes ‘Ooooooh, where can I buy it?’ The underlying strategy for tech firms here is to distract the consumer enough so they forget to download your spec sheet and realise they can’t actually do any of the things that they really want to do like go on the Internet e.g. call their mum or download rude pictures of Lindsey Dawn Mackenzie.
6. Hot Unobtainable Product Demo
Examples: MS Surface (The Possibilities), Nokia Evolve, Nokia Morph Concept, Vodaphone Futures (no longer available), BMW GINA
This is similar to #5 but it shows the product doing something that hasn’t really been released and you don’t even know if it’s possible. If you want consumers to know how clever you are, this is the pattern for you. Make sure you get a fairly cheesy female voiceover who sounds like she’s from the future and she’s already bored by this shit but she’s telling you about it anyway. Think robotic sex slaves or being able to play Halo 10 with only your mind!
7. Infovert OR Stunning Visual Presentation of a Truth which Everyone Sort of Already Knew But Needed Someone in Advertising to Tell Them with Nice Pictures
Example: Dove Evolution
This is similar to the Brand Halo Effect pattern because it has a very core and universal truth which is revealed only at the end. This is pretty good if you sell something that is very socially responsible and/or humanitarian. This kind of stuff gets people talking in the pub because it’s simple and people only talk about simple thing because they are partially drunk on cheeky Vimtos. Dove’s genius here is really the fact that they have used this technique at all. Audacity and irreverence is key here.
8. WTF? How Do They Do That?
Examples: OKGO Treadmill Dancing, Human Tetris, Zack Kim’s Guitar Performances, Kobe Bryant Jumping over Snakes or Aston Martins, 3 Year-old solves a Rubix Cube, Burger King Eat Like a Snake, Nike Freestyle, the list goes on.
This is probably the most common (and annoying?) viral pattern right now but it seems to work over and over again. It’s good for sports brands because they can claim their product can do something that it simply cannot and they aren’t really going to get sued for it because they can say it wasn’t them. Flimsy legislation means that you can infer your product adds to the person’s success in some way without saying it outright. What’s more, if you film it in a really crap way using a camera phone you can make it more believable, the more lo-fidelity the better for this pattern really. In a way, it’s better to have something that almost seems possible but it still really needs to be credible. This is a useful pattern if your product is somehow intended to enhance performance such as trainers, sports drinks, vitamins or those cock rings that Durex started punting around recently.
Be careful on the legal front with this one, best not to share this with the legal team at all really - just upload it anyway and pin it on some kid in Reading when the heat is on.
9. Empowerment Branding
Example: Nike - Take it to the Next Level
This is another fairly modern pattern where your regular Joe does something great, power to the people right on! This is very emotionally appealing and is good for high-involvement categories such as football or Tampax.
10. Nice Big Juicy Hits
Example: Blow job on the beach (two girls blowing up a lilo on a beach)
I’m adding this one if you’re fairly desperate and have a client who’s not too precious about their brand. Apparently, the little screenshots of YouTube videos are taken automatically at a very specific point in your movie. Therefore, if you place suggestive imagery at just the right place people will flock to it in droves thinking it has porn in it. Don’t push this one too much as credibility is low. Better off giving this idea to a junior creative that you’re trying to get rid of and let them hang themselves with it. This pattern will only attract randy boys, so if that’s your thing, knock yourself out.
11. Out-of-Character Celebrity
Example: Sad Kermit, Drench Spring Water ‘Brains’.
Think about ’secretly’ filming the normally placid and lovable Terry Wogan blowing his stack and going nuts, slapping the face of his assistant for over-brewing his beloved and delicious PG Tips. Likewise, how about ex-Big Brother’s Jade Goody reciting the periodic table of elements and the early poetry of Keats in order to prove how much better your brain performs after drinking Drench Spring Water? The same pattern worked wonderfully on CHI’s wonderful ‘Brains…’ ad.
This has the added benefit of increased targeting. If you can get someone that a target audience loves and identifies with doing something unexpected, you’re on to a winner. This has to be one of my favourite patterns of the moment.
12. Animal Personification
Examples: Drumming Gorilla, Elephant doing a self-portrait, Rolling Rock Beer Ape
People don’t seem to be able to get enough of this stuff on the YouToobs. Talking dogs, dancing bears, alcoholic dolphins - these are timeless classics that you can pull out if you want to do something non-product focused and irreverent. This is simply for entertainment value and all you can do to brand it is either stick a DOG (the annoying digital ones you see on TV not the ones that bark and poo), do some product placement or something subliminal.
13. Weird Science
Example: Diet Coke & Mentos, Mobile Phone Popcorn, Will It Blend?
Wow, I didn’t realise you could do that with that! Lots of products in the average home feature chemical compounds that can be combined to create a party of noxious or explosive properties that can delight to the senses. It doesn’t even need to be real, the mobile phone popcorn one certainly wasn’t. Get yourself a Bunsen burner off eBay and see what you can do in your nan’s kitchen with some cat food and a bottle of Domestos.
14. Where’s the dignity?
Example: Angry German Kid, Office Worker Freak Out, Numa Numa, Nintendo Sixty FOOOOOUUUR, Leave Britney Alone, Don’t Tase Me Bro!
These things will always be very funny. It’s human nature to pick on our fellow man and then relish the shocking behaviour they exhibit. This is similar to the ‘Personified Animals’ pattern in that this is good entertainment value and you just need to stick your brand in there somehow. Like the ‘Personified Animals’ pattern, because you’re just attaching your brand to something that is already entertaining, you just need to do some intelligent product placement.
The added beauty of this one is that people are likely to remix your stuff and the message can live on forever in the land of internets.
15. It’s business time
Examples: Flight of the Conchords, Box Man
Personally I hate funny songs - that was until I needed my guts surgically inserted back into my body after listening to ‘Business Time’ by Flight of the Conchords. This is some hilarious shit and is on a par with anything by The Mighty Boosh.
Be very careful with this one, if you try and rip something else off blatantly or you simply are not funny enough you might have a Turkey Twizzler on your hands. You have been warned! Take a look at this utterly terrible spot featuring the Honey Monster crimping his head off [Update 15th July: it's now been removed from most places online after legal nonsense from the Boosh]. It simply cannot compete with the genius of the original and it gets no creds for cultural relevance.
16. Super-delusional weirdo
Example: Ask a Ninja, The Unforgivable Series, Master Chief Sucks at Halo 3
This is another entertainment-only piece that will need clever product placement to work for your brand. These can be fairly funny and, looking at what has succeeded in the past, the weirder the better in my opinion.
17. Shock Tactics
Example: Carlsberg & Mentos (Final Destination rip-off)
This one’s fairly simple, you take a situation where the viewer is expecting something very predictable to happen but you shock them with something completely different. With this, it’s really important to make sure that your brand is meaningful to the context, otherwise your brand will benefit nothing. People will talk about your ad but they wont remember what it was for.
18. Violate a Stereotype
Example: Prep Unit - Tea Party, Citroen Alive with Technology
Take two high-level and completely disparate stereotypes, something along the lines of an insurance underwriter and an Emo kid or a mime artist and a lawyer. This can be very product focused as you can use the profession involved with the product somehow. It doesn’t need to be about a profession, Euro RSCG messed with people’s preconceived notions of what you can do with a car in their ‘Alive With Technology’ TVC for the Citroen C4. Why not mess with people’s preconceived notion of what you can do with your own product? Be outlandish and think big. You’re likely to make a lot of money out of this one if you can crack it.
19. Irritating Catchphrases
Example: Budweiser Wassup, Lynx Boom Chicka Wah Wah
This is perhaps the most difficult pattern to do well and you should probably steer clear of it entirely. Quite frankly, the only way this can be pulled off is if you happen to catch some kids drinking in the local park repeating each other saying the same zany thing over and over. What’s great about this is that the catch phrase just needs to be funny, it doesn’t even need to be about your product. This can work well if you are selling your product to young men with a puerile sense of humor, again Nuts readers and people who actually buy Lynx. Another added benefit is that you can get some revenge on those little shits in the park that keep leaving 20/20 bottles and empty fag packets all over your beautiful local Victorian park.
20. Objects Doing Things They Really Weren’t Made For
Example: Guinness Tipping Point, Citroen Car - Alive with Technology
This is very similar to the ‘Violate a Stereotype’ pattern but is more specific. There’s a million miles left to go on this one. Lots of people loved the idea of using fridges as dominoes, why not get two monkeys to drive a Volvo Estate car across the surface of mars to demonstrate the safety and air conditioning? Or have the cranes that cast shadows across London falling in love with cars below, gently hugging them while everyone else has gone to sleep?
These ideas probably seem a bit rubbish but get some creatives pissed on cheeky Vimtos and see them clamoring to tell you their ‘big idea’.
You’ll find there are plenty of opportunities for product placement here if you have a product that is easily recognisable.
21. Connect Video Games to Real Life
Example: Coke Commercial, GamesBreakOut
This is very much aimed at young folks but merging the worlds of immersive gaming and advertising can come up with some pretty funny ideas.
______________________________________________________________________________
So there you go, I’ve come up with a few here that I think should help you get started but there are no doubt hundreds more. Feel free to email me your patterns or add them into the comments and I’ll compile them into a ‘Part 2′. So, make up your own, try and identify the patterns in other channels and generally start astonishing your colleagues with your new-found sense of creativity and enlightenment. Then get yourself down to the pub for the afternoon with a pork pie and a bottle of Babycham.Source - Ship's Biscuit
No comments:
Post a Comment