Town Sprayed With Scent to Attract Women

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If you don't look closely while watching this tongue in cheek news reel about a female-deprived town in Alaska that scented itself aerially to attract women, you'll miss the fact it's a viral for Axe Deodorant. The clip is peppered with witty one liners and quips delivered non-chalantly and straight-faced making for, in our opinion, an effective piece of viral marketing.

by Steve Hall    Jun-29-05    
Topic: Viral



Paris Hilton Spoof Vaults Recruitment Firm to National Fame

In true buzz marketing form, recruitment firm, Accolo, which created a spoof, called "rethink Recruiting," of the famous Paris Hilton Carl's Jr. commercial has seen itself catapulted into the national limelight. The firm will be featured on a segment of Good Morning America at 7:40 AM EST. The spoof has been viewed 1.5 millions times and will also be featured on A Current Affair, Entertainment Tonight, Tarrant on TV in the UK, Fuji TV in Japan and the Today Show in Australia. In addition to television coverage, the spoof has been covered on upwards of 1,000 weblogs as well as The New York Times, The New York Post, Star Magazine and the San Francisco Chronicle among others.

by Steve Hall    Jun-27-05    
Topic: Viral



Bike Ride to Cannes Supports Leukemia

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Five years ago, Ridley Scott's production company, RSA Films, founded The Fireflies Ride to raise money for Leukemia research organization Lueka. Five years later, it's still going strong.

The Fireflies Ride is a rugged, nine day ride through the mountains from Geneva to Cannes. This year a "rider," actor-writer Theodore Bouloukos, has launched his own website that tracks his progress with a new video clip every day. It's a pro bono project by the now corporation.

The viral website and all content was created by HBXIV, the now corporation's viral unit. the now corporation is also co-sponsoring a party to welcome the riders when they arrive in Cannes. Though the ride takes nine days for the Fireflies to complete, no one knows just how long Theo will ride. You'll know why after you see his physique.

by Steve Hall    Jun-22-05    
Topic: Viral



'CSI' Writer Takes Work Home

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Adrants reader Morris Adamowitz sent us this video which features a guy who claims to be a writer for CBS's CSI. In the video, he drones on about his writing inspirations, how he has to learn the latest techniques in forensic science, do meticulous research and sometimes, take the work home with him. In this case, literally, as he nonchalantly grabs a dead guy off a slab, carries him to his car and brings him into his house all while continuing to drone on about his work.

Whether this is an authorized viral or not, it really doesn't matter. It's good. It works.

UPDATE: It's all real. See comments.

by Steve Hall    Jun-21-05    
Topic: Viral



Ty Pennington Goes Viral For Alltel

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Ty Pennington of Trading Spaces and Extreme Makeover fame is appearing in a viral, security cam style, for Alltell. In the viral, Pennington appears to be getting ready to take a shower until, in the last frame, he pops up and shouts, "Hey! What are you looking at?" A link then takes you to an Alltel page promoting its "txt2win" million dollar sweepstakes which Pennington say will help you build the home of your dreams. OK, so the security cam thing has been done many times before but more than one person sent this link to us so, apparently, it's getting around which, afterall, is one of the major points to a viral efforts. And, anyway, who doesn't want a chance to win a million bucks?

by Steve Hall    Jun-21-05    
Topic: Viral



Peugeout Makes Tongues Wag

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If you think kissing with tongues is fun, wait until you try catching a car with your tongue as these two car lovers do in this clip. This video, called Tongue Match, for the Peugeot 206CC and created by Euro RSCG 4D in Germany, directed by Thierry Poiraud, gives a whole new meaning to tonguing.

by Steve Hall    Jun-20-05    
Topic: Viral



Oxygen Network Co-Ops Gary Brolsma's Numa Numa

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Numa Numa creator Gary Brolsma fame boy said it best himself. "I really don't know how it happened, the Internet is a mighty place, obviously nothing too interesting must be happening because my stupid video debuted on CNN...the ONLY place I uploaded it was Newgrounds, and now it's everywhere." That it is as well as many spoofs of his original work collected on this website. Even Oprah's Oxygen Network has jumped on board with a recently created version of their own including, presumably, Oxygen network staffers belting out the network's signature "Oh!" to the kooky Numa Numa tune. There's even an "Oh!" logo at the end.

The video does not seem to be directly available on the Oxygen site but is hosted there and is deep linked from the Gary Brolsma fan site. We wonder if they just created it for internal enjoyment or if they meant for it to leak virally. We think it will be the latter now. Make sure you see Gary's original too.

by Steve Hall    Jun-18-05    
Topic: Viral



Sperm On A Mission Gets Confused

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Usually sperm are on a single minded mission and not much can be done to stop them from accomplishing that mission. One lone sperm in this viral, the first to make rounds on the new ViralBomb email list, approaches the point of return and does experience second thoughts. You'll chuckle at what's being promoted.

by Steve Hall    Jun-16-05    
Topic: Viral



Viral Advertising Announcement List Launched

Dabitch from the weblog Adland has launched a mailing list where "creators worldwide announce their release of a new campaign (since the web is worldwide), where viral colleagues in the business, ad bloggers, rubbernecked viral addicts, trade press journalists and other web heads are on the list and can stay hip to the latest." If you're interested, sign up here.

by Steve Hall    Jun-16-05    
Topic: Viral



End Hunger Viral Work Challenged, Praised

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Good Or Bad Viral?

the now corporation and HB XIV created a site, intended to virally call attention to hunger, called For Mother's Day which included a video montage of women breastfeeding babies. The site originally linked to charitable hunger-relief organization America's Second Harvest until they complained, sending a threatening letter to Domains by Proxy, under which the now corporation had registered the site, asking the link to America's Second Harvest be removed from the For Mother's Day site. Even though the video could be seen as a bit racy by some, Hollywood actor Jeff Bridges, who runs his own hunger-relief organization called the End Hunger Network, had no problem with it and sent a complimentary note to the now corporation's president, Owen Plotkin. The For Mother's Day site now links to Bridges' End Hunger Network site and, heeding the request from America's Second Harvest, Plotkin removed that organization's link from the Mother's Day site.

Following the creation of the For Mother's Day site, Plotkin launched Paris Hilton Films, another site intended to virally spread the end hunger message. Paris Hilton Films, which features Carl's Jr. imagery of Hilton and pseudo videos, prominently features Bridges End Hunger site. Plotkin says, of these two efforts, he is simply trying to raise awareness of hunger issues. While acknowledging the racy aspects of his efforts, he doesn't understand why an organization like America's Second Harvest would want to limit exposure to its efforts.

more »

by Steve Hall    Jun-16-05    
Topic: Viral