YouTube is about to get clever with the addition of video annotations. These are a new way to add interactive elements to your videos. Add background information, create stories with multiple possible endings or link to related content. You control what they say, where they appear, when and for how long.
The possibilities are endless, and could open up a whole new set of opportunities for viral marketing. Check out the instructional video, or check out the example below:
This article was written back in Oct 2007, but it is still relevant to how to create successful viral content today. The article uses one of its own tips - lists - to outline 6 ideas on how to build top viral content.
In brief, these top 6 tips are:
Lists - easily digestable & contain good, useful information
Quizzes - fun to take & results are easy to share and compare with friends
Interactive video - customised videos work really well
Images - great at evoking user emotion, especially shock or humour
Tools - users like tools that make their life easier
Teaching users how to do something - people generally like to learn new & cool things
However, the full article is definitely worth a read, and has some useful articles.
Although obviously no viral campaign is going to work without creativity behind each of these ideas.
South Park does it again… This time they attack the You Tube and viral video stars and the fake (theoretical) dollar values associated with them. Funny episode but only if you know your stuff… but surely everyone has been sent that bloody gopher on Facebook, right?
Enjoy. Oh and just to be clear, this is definitely NSFW - unless you are at a cool place like ours
Huzzah! Its that time of year again (y’know, that narrow margin between January and November) when the all that familiar chocolate covered loveliness hits your local news stand. Yep, its creme egg season once again. And if, like the rest of us at the office, you need your daily fix of the aforementioned-tooth-melting-goodness, what better site to check out than cremeegg.co.uk
This somewhat bizarre site investigates the psychology of the humble creme egg, helping them to embrace their mortality and release their inner goo. There’s a lot to explore here, and if you’re anything like me the frustratingly ambiguous navigation will leave you clicking around for a while before you find the ‘free chocolate section’ (having done the hard work, I can report that is under ‘competitiveness’). However, I love the thought that’s gone into designing each section in a different part of the lab, and the cleanness of the page is refreshing, since all the navigation works from a pull down map. There’s also a lot to catch your attention in each area, with as much detail going into background shenanigans as the foreground elements.
Having said this, I can’t help but feel Cadburys have missed a trick by not enabling any real user involvement or content. The best part of the site by far are the stop-frame animated creme egg ‘deaths,’ which, despite not being particularly original (I refer of course to similar bunny related escapades) nonetheless warrant a good laugh and would have been a great gateway for user content. Suicide jokes…always funny. If you’ve missed them on TV up until now, it’s well worth a look.
This is Webster. He’s a duck. Actually he’s a lovely big plastic duck for über cool fashion brand Duck and Cover. Why is webster at Neoco… all will be revealed. In fact, if you can email in some funny ideas as to why we would have a large plastic duck in our office you can win a Duck and Cover canvas satchel.
