Full Disclosure: I may be a bit biased here since I was the writer and animator on this project. While I tend to be hyper-critical of my work (is any creative person not?) I am more impressed with the strategy behind the branding video carried out by HubSpot.
They didn’t just create the video and throw it out to the whims of the internet, they had a plan. In the word’s of the Episode “Guru” of David Meerman Scott “Create exceptional content that people will want to share, and point the world to your virtual doorstep.”
This is a pretty amazing video featuring daredevil Danny MacAskill jumping fences and off of roofs…on a bicycle. It’s a pretty awe inspiring video to watch just to marvel at his sheer skills which is why I chose it as the Buzzworthy Wednesday for this week. The video was originally published in April and has steadily chugged along since then to almost 10 million views. It’s lightly branded by Inspired Bicycles which is what makes it so effective.
Danny MacAskill reminds me of Hans “No Way” Rey who pioneered the sport of Mountain bike trialing in the 80′s when I was growing up. I would try to “emulate” Hans while going over “jumps” on my Schwinn Varsity 10 speed in my neighborhood. Bikes are one of the first methods of transportation a kid gets to their own freedom. You can go places on a bike you couldn’t by foot and jump over things just to test yourself. I remember lusting after certain brands of bikes because that was what Hans Rey or Greg Lemond were riding on.
If this was just a video about the bike brand with their message slapped all over it no one would watch it, but to watch a master of trialing perform while set to the perfect soundtrack of “The Funeral” by Band of Horses makes you watch with your jaw dropped open at what this guy can do on a bike. If I were into trialing or if I were a kid today after watching this video…this is the bike I’d want because every kid on a bike dreams of doing the stuff Danny does in this video.
In honor of everyone returning back to school there were a number of laptop videos released in the past couple of weeks. Nokia released a video for a brand new breed of portable devices, called the Booklet 3G. What does it take to make a netbook sexy? While it’s a pretty straight forward product demo – it’s done elegantly, with a great soundtrack, branded color scheme throughout and takes advantage of YouTube’s HD which really shows it’s stuff in this video when you watch it in full screen mode. All that combined makes it this week’s Buzzworthy Wednesday selection.
As a mobile market industry leader, Nokia has been expected by the mobile market to release a product in the world of netbooks. With the fierce competition in the mobile market raging on, Nokia chose to widen their product range with the Nokia Booklet 3G and step into the netbook arena with authority.
The video was picked up worldwide immediately after it’s release on August 24th by some influential blogs which already has resulted in over 660,000 views and over 20 duplicate videos.
This week’s video comes from Johnnie Walker who released this brilliant six-minute video shot in a single continuous take and stars Robert Carlyle as the narrator taking us on the journey through the progression of Johnnie Walker whiskey from the shopkeeper experimenting with blending malts to the powerhouse it is today. It is well written and sequenced with entertaining narration perfectly matched to well-timed visual cues. Believe me…doing this in a single continuous take is not as easy as they make it look.
Interestingly enough, its not posted on YouTube by Johnnie Walker but by some random YouTube user in Brazil. I actually heard about it from the Creative Culture Weekly Top 5 podcast. This isn’t exactly a large audience podcast but still a mention on it would build buzz. In the US where’s the first place you’d go when searching for a video? Wouldn’t you want to at least have a branded YouTube channel with the video properly tagged including a description and links to your website or landing page? I know I would. At any rate, it’s had a few thousand views but is definitely worth the watch.
So this week was a little light in terms of newly released online marketing videos that I would consider buzzworthy. However my pick this week is for Nike SB to celebrate the release of professional skateboarder Paul Rodriguez’s (aka P Rod) third shoe (the skateboarding son of the famous comedian). Set to the grooving tempo of the Ice Cube song “Today Was a Good Day”, the Nike video kind of parallels the original Ice Cube music video storyline just through the eyes of a skateboarder with one slight humorous difference at the end. It’s had over 370,000 views since being uploaded about 3 weeks ago.
Nothing earth shattering here. No crazy production. No trick camera skills. No dancing babies or flash mobs. While there are some very cool skateboarding tricks, I’m not a particularly big fan of skateboarding. So why did this video appeal to me? I probably just like it because the skateboarding tricks ARE cool, the tempo of them follow the music well and it’s set to one of my all time favorite rap songs. There I said it. Sometimes it’s all about the music and how it moves you or grabs you.
