This past year I've been working with the guys over at Viralskool, a new creative community that's looking to pay filmmakers, animators and so on for making viral videos for top companies.
Here's some advice based on the work I did. Note that it relates to creating "branded entertainment" for paying clients rather than, say, creating a movie trailer that you want to "go viral". I've addressed that a little before in other posts but I'll make a new post specifically about creating trailers for the web.
What is A Viral Video?
So first, let's define what I mean by a viral video... It ought to be a video that becomes popular because one person recommends it to their friends and they then recommend it to their friends and so on until the video views grow exponentially. So let's say a cool clip that people want to share.
There are those who argue a video is only viral after it's been shared or if it has several hundred thousand views. But I think it's more helpful to look at "viral video" as a genre - just like music video or short film or feature film.
Note that just uploading a clip to YouTube won't make it "go viral" and those popular clips from well-known brands all have additional marketing support (PR, paid advertising etc) and what's known as "seeding" - outreach to blogs and destination sites asking them to feature the clip.
So How Do You Make Your Videos Sharable?
You have to put yourself in the shoes of the sharer and the receiver. Nobody wants to be associated with lame content, right? So don’t create anything that’s lame, self-indulgent, pretentious or badly acted unless it’s for humorous effect!
Ask yourself these questions. When I send someone a link to this video:
- Will I look cool for sharing this video?
- Will it strengthen my friendship with the person I’m sending the video to?
- Will they look cool passing it on?
Unless you can answer “yes” to all the above then revisit your video idea until you score 3 out of 3.
So here's my advice for optimising your video to make it spreadable:
- Spend more time thinking up a great idea than you spend shooting it. This will keep your costs down, keep your enthusiasm high and is most likely to yield the best results.
- Grab attention in the first 5 seconds. Be surprising, be funny, be shocking or tease. Just make sure you grab attention or else you’ll be dead in the water.
- Finish with a punch line. There has to be a reward for anyone that’s given you up to 30 seconds of their life! Make the last 5 seconds more surprising, funnier, more shocking or more provocative than the first 5 seconds. You want someone to finish the video and think “OMG I have to send this to ….”
- Use the middle part of the video to engage. The part between the beginning and the end is the part that needs to keep evolving the idea or revealing something new. If you look at the Levi’s viral Guy Backflips into Jeans, it’s only about someone jumping into a pair of jeans but the team tries to keep the idea fresh by using different methods and places to jump. It’s the same for the Ray-ban Never Hide videos.
Although there's no limit to how long your video can be, it's better to get in, do the job and get out within 30 seconds... 90 seconds tops. Sure, you'll find videos that are longer but you'll find that your time and money is better spent getting those 30 seconds the best they can be than making the video longer.
- Invoke a primary emotion in the viewer. Think about which emotion you're trying to invoke in the viewer. Research on viral marketing from the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University found that the best emotions to invoke were surprise & joy. Others possible, although less effective, were sadness, anger, disgust, fear. Although not essential for the viral spread of your video, it's important for the client that the emotions invoked and the connections/connotations brought to mind are consistent with the brand's image and what their fans believe.
- Don't make an advert: Your goal is to entertain, not to inform. An advert is different from what I'm defining as a viral video in that it has overt branding, slogans, product details. Virals are much more subtle in their selling - they're entertainment first and a sales pitch a distant second. Creating a great advert is really tough to achieve and if you have limited resources or lack experience then there's a risk that your "viral" will look like a poor advert... which is unlikely to spread. So concentrate on making something entertaining that people want to share.
Viral Video Styles and Further Tips
As the world of viral video evolves it's possible to see some similarities among the types of content that's popular online. Note that the styles are not mutually exclusive which means a video's spreadable potential is often helped by combining several styles.
Here are the styles/models I've identified:
- Repeat & innovate: keep it fresh
- Do This at Home/Mash-Up
- How Did They Do That? Did They Really Do That?
- Outrageous (ly Funny)
- Sensational Story
- Surreal
There's also a short discussion here, Cool But Not Viral?, about why these popular videos are not "viral" in the definition I've given above.
Repeat and innovate: keep it fresh
Videos that fall into this category are the Levi’s Guy Backflips into Jeans and the Ray-ban video Guy Catches Glasses with Face. The Levi’s viral is only about someone jumping into a pair of jeans – each jump shown as one shot - but the team tries to keep the idea fresh by using different methods and places to jump and different angles. The idea (of jumping into jeans) is big enough to sustain several iterations. Ditto with Guys Catches Glasses with Face but note how in both the videos the best feat is saved until last – it’s the pay-off, the reward for watching until the end.
Both of these videos have the Did They Really Do That? engagement too which prompts viewers to stop, pause and rewind the video – spurring conversation and more sharing.
Thorton’s “Stuck” by Harmony Korine is also in this repeat and innovate category but rather than go for amazement and laughs, it’s wonderfully touching and by returning to the boy on the bench we get the sense of a story unfolding. The limitation of Stuck is that it creates a warm feeling inside rather than the uplifting rush of success (as with the Levis and Ray-ban videos) and this potentially contributes to less sharing.
Do This At Home/Mash-Up
The benefit of a simple idea or a very clear concept is that viewers can spoof it, parody it and mash it up to produce spin-offs that further spread awareness of the original video.
For an example in this category, take Cadbury's Eyebrows. It's impossible to watch and not feel invited to move your eyebrows as the two kids do! Not only does it offer excellent potential to parody with different music and/or different characters but it also invokes the Did They Really Do That question - don't those eyebrows move to fast not to have been enhanced with computer graphics?
How Did They Do That? Did They Really Do That?
Kobe Jumps Over Speeding Car doesn’t have a powerful grab in the first 5 seconds but because it’s Kobe Bryant, it’s his celebrity and the promise of the video title that gets us hooked. Then he jumps the car and we wonder, did he really do that? Whenever you can provoke a comments war about whether the clip is "fake" or "real" then you've engaged an audience!
I've also included in this style T-mobile's Life's for Sharing although in truth it's a combination of many styles. For example, it's surprising, it follows the Repeat and Innovate model - frequently changing songs and dance moves to keep it fresh, it begs the How Did They Do That? question to stimulate conversation and further enquiry, it even has a just little of the Do This At Home going for it. It's main failing is the weak primary emotion (wonderment) and the lack of a punch line. However, the strength of the Repeat & Innovate and the How Did They Do That? vibes probably overcome the weaknesses but even so, when everyone stops dancing and walks off it's a bit flat after all the energy in the video.
Kobe Jumps Over a Speeding Car
Outrageous (ly Funny)
The perfect example of this is the Durex Get It On. This viral scores on so many levels: it’s funny because it’s taboo (sex, animal sex) yet cute (balloon creatures) so doesn’t become gross-out funny and it’s technically cool and makes viewers ask “How Did They Do That”?
I've also included in this category a music video for the group Make The Girl Dance. Although not outrageously funny, it's outrageous in the sense of three women walking nude through Paris! The video works not just because of the nudity but because it's excellently executed in one continuous shot (very difficult to achieve), it innovates with different girls, it's humorous & engaging to watch at the bystanders' reactions and it's amazing that they got away with it!
Make The Girl Dance "Baby Baby Baby"
Sensational Story
For this format to work, at its heart there has to be a story that generates conversation around the water cooler - it has to be a sensational story. It's the kind of tale that passes for "news" in the tabloids and gossip magazines - we know it's unimportant but it's fun to talk about. The stories provide light-hearted "humorous shock" and there's often a sense of schadenfreude (which kind of means laughing at someone else's misery).
This is a tough category to get right. A great example is the video below for Triumph Boats. It looks like a candid clip because it's taken in one shot, the picture quality isn't so great and at the end the camera operator runs away leaving the camera running. But it was actually created by an ad agency to highlight & promote the strength of Triumph's boats.
Another, less effective example, is Leaked Assassination Footage from Russia for the video game MIR-12. The problem with this "viral" is that it doesn't invoke any strong primary emotions and it isn't surprising or shocking enough. It succeeds in part because it has a "Did They Really Do That?" interest: it makes the viewer consider if this is actually real footage (although it had us immediately shouting "fake" - the acting & action is too poorly staged and executed to look "realistic"). It's doubtful that this video was actually shared among many friends.
Leaked Assassination Footage from Russia
This is my last category and ought to be used with caution. It's very easy to say "my video is surreal" when what really ought to be said is that it's confusing! In many ways, most viral videos have some surreal quality to them but it's worth looking at a couple of the best examples.
A classic example of this style is Cadbury's Gorilla. This viral was so ahead of it's time that it generated incredible off-net conversations around the water cooler that further fueled its online growth. More than just surreal though, the video is inventive, engaging, humorous and touching. Investing the gorilla with human traits gives us a warm feeling inside but it also acts as a hook to keep us engaged and in suspense wondering what's going to happen.
Still great but a little less successful is Ray-ban's Cow Gives Birth to Dude. Although it's surreal, it's surprising, it's humorous... it lacks a real feel-good vibe or laugh-out-loud punch line. Massive Yarn Ball Rolls Through San Francisco is better although in a similar vein - it's cool, it's surreal, it's makes you smile but the punch line could just be a little better.
Massive Yarn Ball Rolls Through San Francisco
There are many (award-winning) commercials that get shared on the Internet but that doesn't make them a "spreadable". For example, Air New Zealand Nothing to Hide creates a stir because of the nudity/cheekiness and it's certainly inventive but the overt branding and advertising limits it's spreadability - how many more people would have forwarded this video were it not an advert?
The same can be said of Gucci’s Flora by Chris Cunningham. Again it's a wonderful video but it’s not a viral. Quite apart from the fact that it ends on a pack shot, it doesn't invoke a strong enough primary emotion - joy maybe but it's more of wonderment than happiness.
Air New Zealand Nothing to Hide
Great post Rob - best overview of virals I've yet seen with pertinent case studies. In the viral tradition I will pass it on...
I did Mr Vista as an antidote to virals. I call it a downbeat viral. It is super uncool. No punchlines and the emotion is 'despair'! ha ha. But then it was (and is) an experiment.
About half a million views so far - which is good - but not as many as these clips above.
www.mrvista.net
Posted by: Tim Clague | August 11, 2009 at 09:20 AM