Words don’t come easy

Posted on by

As a warm-up to tonight’s Champions League action, what’s better than to replay this Ronaldinho ad for Nike? Surely it’s somehow faked, right? Though the player himself denied it (while a Nike spokesman confirmed doctoring the video – Ronaldinho “only” hit the crossbar twice).

Chances are you received the video as an e-mail attachment from a friend, or maybe you were e-mailed the link to YouTube or another of the video services. Or you read about it in a blog. In either case, it would be an example of successful word of mouth marketing. More or less funny or spectacular videos have been circulating the web for years, and still most of them are non-commercial, according to Matthew Smith of The Viral Factory, one of the speakers at an MSN seminar in Oslo last Friday. The key to successful “viral” ads is to produce material that people really want to share, and to dare lose control of the message. Smith is among the people predicting the end of broadcasting, as technology makes it easy for people to piece together their own video menu. The utopia is that “Good content will be the only content” – since there no longer will be necessary to fill a daily 12 hour schedule.

The viral world view was shared by Erik Holmdahl of ad agency Strawberry Frog: It’s all about creating campaigns that people like to talk about. Holmdahl certainly enjoyed telling the story of the Lovely Football campaign for Onitsuka Tiger sneakers. Very charming song in karaoke style with competition element. That messages are overtly commercial does not seem to be an obstacle to success. Ads are accepted as long as we can choose to see them – not being forced to.

Smith provided more examples, such as Trojan Games and Share the pain – what users dream about doing to the IT department.

All this reminded me of the fabulous Fox ad starring the tough Turkish diver. Word of mouth years ago. And of course it was up there on YouTube.