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How Companies Use “Viral” to Become Viral
Posted by: Junie Wu | March 8, 2011 | Leave a Comment
On December 29th, 2010, drinksmartwater uploaded a “Smartwater Trailer” on YouTube that generated as of March 7th 554 views. You can say this was not very successful as not many people watched it before the “jennifer aniston goes viral- smartwater” video was posted. Since then, the trailer has reached 6,549 views and the video itself has accumulated 1,423,212 views. It is amazing on how fast this video has spread because last night, this video generated a relatively miniscule amount of viewers- just under 1,500.
BeenerKeeKee19952 also uploaded “Jennifer Aniston Goes Viral (With Me) Smartwater Viral Campaign.” This is significant because smartwater has created a evangelist by incorporating him in the commercial, which would then influence many of his own followers. Within one day, many people have uploaded their own reviews, opinions, and responses to this “viral” video. For example, MaxJohnsonTv2 said in his video, “water is water, all water is the same” demonstrates that this video is creating buzz about the product which is the objective.
Smartwater utilizes a few YouTube sensations to help make their product spread across the community. Essentially they are trying to use “viral” in an explicitly blatant and humourous way to become viral. This proved to be very successful as Smartwater was able to plunge into the YouTube pool and experience the positive ripple affects.
Mashables asks a great question about this online video ad, “What do you think? Can Smart Water have it both ways? Or is this idea not so smart after all?” I think Smartwater did a great job in creating brand awareness and a positive image (by the looks of the online comments so far). I believe they owe their success to being one of the few companies to utilize this tool and maintaining a light humourous tone in the video. Once this tool gets old, I do not think other videos will receive the positive result that the Jennifer Aniston “Sex Tape” did.