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Digital PR Strategist

Hans Kullin is a Digital PR Strategist based in Stockholm, Sweden. He runs the blog Media Culpa about Public Relations and media.

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Swedish Volkswagen video the most viral ever

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Posted December 30, 2009 with 2427 reads

Keywords: advertising, marketing, media 2.0, Research, social customer, video, volkswagen amerika werbung, volkswagen usa advertising, volkswagen viral video, volkswagen werbung america, volkswagen werbung deutschland, volkswagen werbung schweden

Volkswagen turns to social media when promoting new cars. In a recent Advertising Age article, Volkswagen of America says it is launching the next generation GTI exclusively on an iPhone app, because it is a cost-efficient marketing tool. Compare that with the $60 million Volkswagen spent on TV commercials on the 2006 launch of GTI.

And in Sweden, Volkswagen has produced three videos that have gone viral, to the extent that one of them has become the most viral video ever made (even more viral than Susan Boyle, thank God), at least according to the Viral Video Chart. "Pianotrappan" (the piano stairs) has been viewed almost 7 million times in less than a month, but what makes it the most viral video is the number of blog posts and tweets about the video (3,100 blog posts and 12,800 tweets). Well done Volkswagen and DDB.

See also the other two videos here and here.

Tags: viral, video, volkswagen, volkswagen, video, utpressning. Ping.
Link to original post at Media Culpa: Link to original post

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PaulFuriga said:

Hans, thanks for the English link. I notice that video has now been viewed 9.4 million times. Wow. I did watch all three clips -- the same. No connection with the car.

I guess I am with Al Ries, the author of "The Fall of Advertising and the Rise of PR" on this specific point. He used the Energizer Bunny marketing campaign to make the case that even with a product icon as recognizable as that, as many as 50 percent of those who experienced the campaign incorrectly identified the brand associated with it in a double blind study. In this case, the car and brand are (currently) absent from a creatively whimsical and delightful campaign (that is drawing great response).

My only quibble with it is whether the absence of the car and brand can surmount the thousands of short-burst, multi-tasked messages we get daily to stir the brains of the audience to make the connection â€” and expend additional time and effort to click through the web site to discover the connections. If not, I would expect that a strong additional dose of marketing expenditure would be required to make the connections, as compared to making the connections quickly and upfront in the videos themselves.

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Wed, 2009-12-30 16:42 — PaulFuriga

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kullin said:

Paul, I guess the underlying message is that VW's are more fun to drive. The videos show that different things in life can be improved and made funnier, and that's the connection to the cars. I admit that the link to the product is extremely vague, especially if you only watch a single clip. But I can see VW associating the car with "fun" if they can repeat this stunt over and over again in new formats.

BTW, the English language version is here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lXh2n0aPyw

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Wed, 2009-12-30 16:03 — kullin

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PaulFuriga said:

Hans, thank you for sharing this. There is an exploding industry of "public" art/stunts/marketing that is feeding the viral pipeline (I am recalling the cell service videos with people dancing in a train station -- was that T Mobile?).

In any case, what I am struggling to see here is the connection with the car. The same attention-getting device could have been employed for any product (with equally vague results). I do NOT read Swedish, so perhaps I am missing something in the translation. Even if I am, I would argue that this vibrantly visual medium is not being employed to its fullest potential if I can watch this, enjoy it and still not understand what it has to do with the new Volkswagen GTI. Shouldn't that be readily apparent?

Unless that connection is made, this is just a clever parlor trick played out in the world's new parlor, YouTube.

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Wed, 2009-12-30 15:22 — PaulFuriga

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