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Viral
Communication
"Viral,
in the context of the Internet, is defined as “adj., relating to
an online video or feature whose popularity spreads like a virus through
links posted on websites and blogs and in forwarded e-mails.
Jim
Scott, co-founder of the Minneapolis creative agency Mono, writes that,
besides luck, web content needs three things to go viral:
1.
simple - It should engage people quickly
2.
new - Viewers should not have seen it before.
3.
good - High quality is more compelling."
Commentary:
An objective of most communication is to reach as many people as possible.
On the other hand, the Internet is essentially a vehicle for individual
communication. Emails are sent to individual persons or to small groups
on a list. “Spamming”, which is the practice of sending emails
involuntarily to thousands or millions of people, is seen as an improper
practice, even if this happens quite often. “Viral” communication
achieves the same objective of communication with many people. Essentially,
it is individual communication which spreads by word-of-mouth in a public
platform such as MySpace or YouTube.
Randy
A. Salas, media reporter for the Star Tribune, has identified “six
homegrown (Minneapolis-area) Internet sites that have attracted the
attention of a cyber nation.”
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Monoface
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Tay Zonday’s
“Chocolate Rain”
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BMW’s
“The Hire”
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| What it is:
Minneapolis-based
creative agency Mono wanted to sent a New Year’s greeting to
its clients, so it created a Web-based application called Monoface.
Click on the head, mouth, nose or either ye of the computerized
visage and it seamlessly rotates among the features of the firm’s
15 employees. The facial combinations, 759,375 of them, can e truly
bizarre and funny - a great time-waster. |
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What it is:
He looks like Urkel, but sounds like James
Earl Jones, observers say. That’s Tay Zonday. The creation
of University of Minnesota Grad student Adam Bahner, the unlikely
vocalist scored with a YouTube video for his song “Chocolate
Rain, hilariously highlighted by his off-mike gasps for air. He
has done other songs, but “Chocolate Rain” has attained
a life of its own, Bahner says. |
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What it is:
BMW’s online film series, created for
the German automaker by Minneapolis ad agency Fallon Worldwide,
went viral before that term was even used. “The Hire”
ruled online video years before YouTube was created. The eight eight-minutes
films, produced in 2001 and 20023, starred Clive Owen at the Driver
and featured top stars such as Madonna and Forest Whitaker and high-profile
directors such as Ang lee, Jon Woo and Guy Ritchie. The goal was
to show BMW cars in action using performance footage that was “too
hot for TV”, says John Blackburn, who was part of the Fallon
creative team. |
| First
posted:
January 1, 2007 |
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First
posted:
April 22, 2007 |
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First
posted:
April 26, 2001 |
Going viral:
Words spread quickly by bookmark-sharing sites such as StumbleUpon
and delicio.us.
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Going viral:
The video festered for a few months before taking off in July and
becoming the YouTube download of the summer. |
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Going viral:
Buzz was strong from the get-go, thanks to the people involved and
the online-only aspect of the campaign. |
| Total
views:
In Monoface’s first three days online, the surge in traffic
to the agency’s website shut down its servers, says Mono co-founder
Jim Scott. The website received 1.8 million hits in the first three
months of Monoface vs. 2,500 |
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Total
views:
More than 8.3 million at last count. |
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Total
views:
By the time BMW retired its site for “The Hire” in 2005,
the films had been viewed 93 million times, according to the British
trade publication Campaign. |
| Aftermath:
Accolades for Monoface have included a Silver Cyber Lion award at
the International Advertising Festival in Cannes, France, and a
Webby nomination - and lots of publicity for the agency. |
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Aftermath:
Parodies and remixes of “Chocolate Rain” have featured
Darth Vader, McGruff the crime Dog and others. Media appearances
by Bahner were capped by his august performance on “Jimmy Kimmel
Live!” He will open for Dan Deacon and Girl Talk at Minneapolis’
First Avenue on October 5th. |
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Aftermath:
The films brought global acclaim for BMW and Fallon, which eventually
parted ways. DVDs of the films became a hot commodity among collectors.
Although “The Hire” is officially retired, it continues
to circulate online via YouTube and other sites. |
| www.mono-1.com/monoface |
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www.youtube.com/tayzonday |
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“Drunk
Squirrel”
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Billiam the
Snowman
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Tim Fort’s
Kinetic Art
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| What it is:
Shad and Anna Petosky returned to their home in north Minneapolis
last autumn to find a squirrel eating out of the jack-o’-lanterns
left on their porch from Halloween. The pumpkins had fermented.
The squirrel was plastered. “Instead of fleeing as we approached
the stairs, he started trying to climb the house and flipped and
rolled around,” Shad Petosky recalls. So he got out his video
camera. The resulting two-minute clip shows the clobbered critter
trying o climb a tree and staggering around on the pavement. |
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What it is:
Minneapolis brothers Nathan and Greg Hamel wanted to do something
different for the July 23 Democratic presidential debate, in which
the questions were posed via videos on YouTube. Other clips featured
talking heads; theirs appropriated a previously animated creation,
Billiam the Snowman, who began by saying, “I’ve been growing
concerned that global warming, the single most important issues
to snowmen of this country is being neglected.” |
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What it is:
Inver Grove Heights artist Tim Fort sets art in motion with his
fascinating displays of falling dominoes and bursting stick bombs
- unless he’s getting paid, when the latter care called “xylo-explosive
devices,” he jokes. To show his various kinetic-art techniques,
he created a six-minute video montage through a grant from the town
of New York Mills, Minn., and posted the clip online. Although cleverly
edited to look like one giant creation, the video actually shows
smaller structures built over the course of two weeks in a 20-by-30-foot
room. |
| First
posted:
November 18, 2006 |
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First
posted:
July 19, 2007 |
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First
posted:
June 23, 2006. |
| Going viral:
Someone pilfered the clip and reposted it on Break.com, where it
won a $400 prize. Then it was featured on Digg and spread. |
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Going viral:
The clip was hailed as the highlight of a dry debate in story after
story, including in the Wall Street Journal and on CNN. |
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Going viral:
The video took off about a year ago, when it was featured by Minnesota
Stories and Yahoo. |
| Total
views:
About 3 million. |
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Total
views:
About 200,000 for the initial clip and followups - “not bad
considering that politics does not play on YouTube,” Nathan
Hamel says. |
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Total
views:
About 2 million via YouTube, Yahoo, the Internet Archive and elsewhere. |
| Aftermath:
TV reports on the clip included Fox News, CNN, and Country Music
Television, earning the Petoskys $1,650 in licensing fees. Break.com
righted a wrong and gave them their rightful $400 won by the clip. |
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Aftermath:
Republican candidate Mitt Romney publicly criticized the media attention
received by Billiam, prompting a YouTube reply from the indignant
snowman. The Hamels are selling Billiam merchandise on CafePress.com
and are in talks to do more clips using Billiam as the spokes-snowman
for global warming. |
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Aftermath:
Fort has been tapped for many public exhibitions of his work and
recently created a kinetic-art display for a Belgian TV commercial. |
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www.youtube.com/kotasHQ |
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“Web sensations:
The Twin Cities have become a virtual petri dish when it comes to producing
videos that ‘go viral’ on the Internet” by Randy A. Salas,
Star Tribune, September 11, 1007, p. E1 & E8
Another Viral Sensation
After pop singer Britney
Spears put on an embarrassing performance at the MTV Video Music Awards,
a passionate fan named Chris Crocker produced an emotional video coming
to her defense. “Leave Britney alone,” Crocker pleaded. Crocker’s
production was so off-the-wall that it became an instant “camp
classic worthy of the most outlandish Joan Crawford impersonation, “
said one reviewer. Posted on September 11, 2007, it had already received
more than 4 million hits three days later.
According to the
review:
“’All
you people care about is readers and making money off of her,’
Crocker screams in the clip as tears make his heavy eyeliner run. She’s
a human!’
“In an interview
with MSNBC, Crocker insisted that his videotaped tirade was genuine,
not a performance - even though he refers to himself as a diva. What
happens with Spears is serious business, he insists. ‘For my generation,
it’s just as big of a topic as 9/11,’ he told MSNBC.”
Star Tribune, September
14, 2007, p. A2
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Chris Crocker
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Britney Spears
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