Viral ads aren't a lucky break - they are the product of immense effort and ingenuity.
Recently Honda produced a new interactive video ad that serves as a prime example of creative advertising within social media.
Titled, "The Other Side," this interactive mini-story shows one man's double life by weaving together two parallel videos. As you watch the video, you can press 'R' on your keyboard to see the alternative, simultaneous story thread.
(Click To Play)
Ads like these aren't easy to make - they require immense creativity and long hours, but it's content like this that has proven to have the best chance of going viral.
Reddit, a site known for savvy audiences averse to advertising, championed the Honda ad, upvoting it to the front page - an incredibly unusual thing to witness with a blatant ad. Yet users embraced the video, commenting on the precision, artistry, and high-level of detail that is evidenced in the video.
Having users openly share and celebrate your ad is a marketing hole-in-one result. If you want your ad efforts to have similar results, take a page from Honda's book. Create a high-quality ad and focus on:
1. Effort. People enjoy seeing others do what they love and do it well. Modern audiences are savvy enough to distinguish between something thrown together vs. a work of labor and love. Today, what impresses users the most is content that clearly requires great effort and expertise to produce.
While polished video ads like Honda's are an obvious example, this trend can be seen all across the web. Guides, ebooks, whitepapers, and tutorials are popular forms of content that succeed in part because of the tremendous effort involved. This is why the "Skyscraper Technique" works so well in online marketing - you don't have to be the first to do something, you just need to do it better than anyone else. Works of immense effort are the ones that get a second glance from users.
2. Easter Eggs. Much discussion of the Honda ad video digs into the hidden details and easter eggs scattered throughout the film. Audiences enjoy being rewarded for their attention and focus. The subtle secrets within the Honda ad creates rewatch value for audiences, and you can bet that the more a user watches a video, the more likely they are to share it with friends and remember it.
3. Creative. Crafting something different and unique will always entrance audiences. Either one of Honda's two videos would have been all right independently, but what really made this ad memorable was the interactive, dual element, with the two videos playing simultaneously, while the viewer hopped across alternative timelines. This is a truly one-of-a-kind form, and users enjoyed its originality.
What do you think of Honda's "The Other Side" ad? Has given you some ad inspiration of your own?