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Wonderglen Brings Back Glory Days of Viral Wonderment What happens when your highly elaborate, intricately planned, deeply seeded viral accomplishes nothing but rack up less than 6,000 views on YouTube and a handful of mentions on obscure sites? You send an email to Adrants, of course! It's been a long time since we've seen one of these good old fashioned viral wannabe things so here we go. Here's the email: The Art of the PR Release, aka, Try a Strap ... on. This is an advertising public service, trust me. After saying yes to Steve that I'd help out, it became clear right away that the big difference between my blog and Adrants is the amount of email submissions he and Angela get. Holy 10-Page Wiki Entry Batman. Hardest part? Reading it all to find the good stuff. Easiest part? The keepers, rare as they are, because they just stand out. I'm sure Steve looks for the same things in a PR release that I do too: Short and sweet, addressed to me by name, and a full url of creative that has actually run or just launched. Stories about future partnerships? Means nothing. Show me the money. The absolute killer though is mass emailings starting with FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE or HELLO or that say "If you wish to know more, please contact us" without including, uh, anything. DELETE. Cutting through the clutter is important-short and sweet and cool is what I got today. 7K Gorilla Run, Absinthe Revisited, Gay Puppy Poems - Gay folk write odes to pet pups. - Folksy new site for Kubler Absinthe. The "Creativity" tab suggests an upcoming CGM effort where people can "contribute to the myth of Absinthe." See videos for preparing mixed drinks. They're cool, and don't you love that background music? Also check out "fact and fiction" and the how-to-drink, which I thought was really neat. By Decon/NY. - Palin inspires rampant web subculture. So many options! Brings back fond memories of Miss South Carolina. - Really good resource on getting paid to blog. - M. M. McDermott is not impressed by Millennials, but he'll cater to them on the Baltimore Sun's hipster spin-off. While reading a stylebook and wearing a nametag labeled "COCK."
by Angela Natividad
Oct- 3-08
Topic: Brands, Campaigns, Events, Good, Guerilla, Online, Publishing, Social, Strange, Trends and Culture, Viral Stock Photo Faux-Viral Attracts Bloggers, But Not Corbis Everyone that starts an agency has a dream account -- a client that, upon winning its business, validates your ability to both create and persuade. Corbis is that dream for General Projects, a just-launched design shop that wooed its prospective client with Schtock.com. Schtock is really flippin' cool. Each time you reload the site, you see a random, totally abstract image. When you click on the "About the image" tab, you'll find each one was composed of many stock photos. The work at left, for example, is called "Emo." Here's how many stock photos it took to produce it. The site blog claims Schtock is the lovechild of someone at "a major stock photo company," putting illicit use to imagery that see nothing but the cutting-room floor. "Corbis" isn't mentioned outright, but all the photos can be found on Corbis's image search. Death by MINI? Sensational. In an online spot called "Bzzzz. Mini Clubman," a passel of geriatric houseflies gather 'round for the emotional funeral of an ex-buddy, whose death is characterized as one "every fly wishes for," "legendary" and "bigger than life." What happened to him? He was flattened mid-flight by a Clubman. Bud Light's 'Swear Jar' Scores 'Outstanding Commercial' Emmy Anheuser-Busch won its first-ever Emmy for "Swear Jar," a spot where employees at an office add change to a jar every time somebody swears. Not so unusual, except the secretary's revealed that the money might be used to buy packs of Bud Light for the office, so even the top execs see motherbleep!in' bleep!suckers around every fuckin'! corner. Produced by DDB/Chicago via Hungry Man. The PR folk say it's been watched 12 million times online and has never appeared on TV. Once again Bud Light scores with what in waking life we'd call a vocal tic. See a spot it ran earlier this year, when the word of the week was "dude." Chris Blake Uses Digital Angst to Promote Weepy Ballad Art, movies, TV, books and music have probably depicted the break-up from every possible angle. So if you're an indie artist trying to ride a power ballad to fame, what's a homie to do? Tap the zeitgeist. Pun intended. For his song Someone Else, Chris Blake claims to have Googled "biggest regrets" and cobbled the results into a music video, which he then posted on YouTube. Regrets range from provocative ("My reluctance to hold my daughter") to banal ("Spending too much time on Facebook"). I dig the contrast between the words and backgrounds. 3M 'Steals' Post-It Note Jaguar Viral Sensation Sadly, there have been a few too many examples of brands co-opting the work of others for their own financial gain. Here's another. In December 2006, Scott Ableman and his co-workers decided to play a practical joke on another co-worker who drove a Jaguar and was one of those people who would park his car in a very remote spot so as to avoid scratches and dings. Ableman and friends plastered the co-worker's car with Post-It notes, took pictures of the resulting colorful design and posted them on Flickr. The whole thing turned into somewhat of a viral sensation. Lacking A Viral Concept? No Worries. Just Use Cats Aren't YouTube viral wannabees great? Why spend a lot of money or try to be overly creative when you don't have to? Just slap up some cheesy images of cats (everyone loves cats, right?), cobble them together with a few amateurish slide transitions and finish it off with an image of Hellboy holding a cat. If the link to this so-bad-it-just-might-be-good video hadn't come from Fallon digital unit Hyper, there would have been no indication it's a promotion for Hellboy 2. But...isn't that sort of the point anyway? Aim for the amateurish so as to appear un-ad-like, don't mention who made it then cross your fingers and hope it spreads. Simple, right? Live Unbuttoned, Make Waves, Cause Fender-Benders "Runaway jeans cause car crash" is the fourth installment of Levi's "Live Unbuttoned" campaign. (Also see backflipping into jeans, which was unexpectedly successful, and helium jeans.) It was put together by Feed Company, which also did the Ray Ban "Never Hide" thing (remember "Guy catches sunglasses with face"?), which is great to see on paper considering people wasted plenty of time drawing comparisons between "backflipping into jeans" and "Guy catches sunglasses with face." Now you at least will know for sure: It's the same company. Tell all your friends. 
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