I saw a cool special on some evening news show that was talking about the power of YouTube and how people are using it to launch themselves into stardom outside of the normal channels of distribution. It seemed like everyone was using one word to describe it: viral. I thought that was a really cool use of the word (sorry, I am a nerd and I do think about cool word usage). They used it to describe the phenomenon of how a video will get passed on from email to email and gets linked from blog to blog and will cover the world in a matter of days. So if you put a video on YouTube that becomes really popular and people get it passed to them in an email and then they pass it on themselves, then your video "goes viral," analogizing, of course, to computer viruses sent over the world through email, etc.
Here's a good example. The tv special highlighted the music group OK Go and how they used YouTube to launch their music career. They had been around for a while and had a funny video that one of the band members sisters had choreographed. That video had been somewhat popular on YouTube, but then they came out with the song "Here It Goes Again," and they got the same bandmember's sister to choreograph their video for that song. She had the idea of doing a dance on treadmills. They did it, and the video went viral. Many of you have probably already seen it. The video has almost 12 million hits on YouTube, the group performed their song and dance on the MTV Video Music Awards, they have sold tons of records, Nike has a marketing campaign using their song, and now there's a supermarket comercial copying the video using the checkout belts instead of treadmills. Anyway, I thought the use of "viral" was interesting and worthy of Musingian's attention(I'm referring to the blog, not to myself in third person).
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13 comments:
This is Katie. So funny. The treadmill dance is awesome. I believe Martha first introduced me to it. I think things going "viral" will change advertising and the public use of information as the news story suggested.
I love the treadmill guys!!! It makes me smile every time. My favorite is the "ice skating" move.
that video rocks. It seems that going viral like these guys means you can have your 15 minutes of fame, but it could be a springboard into more success.
Maybe Bowhunter should go viral.
Yeah, the tv special it talked about how people are trying to make videos that will go viral and that they will then leverage their 15 minutes of fame into something more substantial. The treadmill guys have certainly done that. And did you see the video of the bride screaming and cutting her hair? That was done by some actors who were intentionally trying to get something to go viral so that they could get ahead in the acting business.
But not everyone wants to leverage their viral status into fame. There is this awesome video of a guy playing pachebel's canon on his guitar that has over 15 million hits on YouTube, but it is completely anonymous. Some journalist finally tracked him down. He is just some kid from Australia that didn't want a record deal or anything. He just wants to play his guitar.
Anyway, as you may have already seen, I have added the guitar clip to my main post. Its pretty cool.
Questions and comments on the guitar kid and going viral.
How was he making those drum sounds come out of his guitar?
Is it good or bad that I want to be that kid?
Yes, Cblakes, Bowhunter should go viral. Would YouTube have to bandwidth to support all 8 hours of it though?
If only you all would have majored in the highly esteemed major of marketing you would have learned all about 'going viral' in the sacred class rooms of the FAMB building. In our marketing projects it was almost always required to have a 'viral' marketing strategy be part of our campaign.
Did you all know that I have made a debut on YouTube? It's true.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfDufjU7MZA
TJ, it makes total sense to try to include something that will go viral in an add campaign. Are there any thoughts about what the keys to a good viral add campaign are? The videos that end up going viral seem totally random.
And Amber, your YouTube video is awesome! Your acting performance was superb. If we would have know about that video before the Blakesley Academy Awards, I think that it might have been nominated for best short-length film, and you could have been nominated for best supporting actresss (move over Jennifer Hudson).
You tube is the future and the future is now. The futre is watching our tvshows on youtube. They are just uplinked to the site, and we cant watch them whenever we want. I would give more specifics, but Google has placed a gag order. Anyways, once we get this new project launched, then I can answer all of your questions. Say goodbye to comcast, cox, and Ted Turner. Say hello to Internet TV (never formally known as webtv).
Rumbler, I think that was a haiku.
Amber, what's the story behind Zantar? We watched some of his other videos too and they were pretty funny (though not as funny as the Valentines one).
Its too bad YouTube wasn't around when we were down at BYU. The movies we made (Futures Dawn and Souljourners) would be excellent YouTube material. If those lost tapes ever show up, I'm posting them on YouTube.
Glad you liked his work! Zantar is my friend Collin. He is a film maker who just started putting his stuff on youtube. He did an internship with Wes Anderson and was his personal assistant for a bit.
Amber-
what kind of stuff did Zantar work on with Wes Anderson. Was he at all involved in the pre-production of Wes's new movie that is currently filming?
I enjoyed your acting as well. You didn't even look at the camera. Nice work
Collin did not get to go to India with Wes, his job sadly ended when filming began. But he does now own a pair of Wes' shoes. A cool pair of Nikes that the director was throwing out.
Glad you like my acting skills. It took a couple of takes. . .
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