Viral video in advertising is here to stay–but people are still debating what role it should play or how useful it is. The revolution over the past few years isn’t simply that video content can be posted online, but rather that the very nature of what passes for entertainment and advertising is changing dramatically. The smartest players are innovating and experimenting.
While viral content certainly challenges the old systems of production and is ripe with opportunity, there are even more revolutionary changes to come. Through creating a viral and broadcast campaign for Nokia’s N95 mobile phones, we’ve found that it’s entirely possible to have a production technique that embraces this new reality, makes budgets go further and engages online and broadcast audiences.
We’ve just wrapped a campaign for Nokia where we used over 100 Nokia N95 mobile phones to simultaneously create viral and broadcast content–and the content looks great. In addition to showcasing the product, these powerful mobile cameras made it possible to create content faster–and at a much cheaper price point.
The content follows teams as they competed in the Young Lions Film Competition at the Cannes Lions festival last year. Each team was challenged to make viral videos about the environment in 48 hours, using only a Nokia and a Mac for editing. The campaign content was distributed online, via mobile, and broadcast globally on MTV as part of a branded content program in January ’09. The TV show was shot almost entirely on the same mobile devices used by the teams, and repurposes the campaign’s 120-plus pieces of viral online content.
Besides being integral to the campaign strategy, using Nokia mobile devices to shoot a huge chunk of the content allowed us to dramatically extend the scope of the campaign. We had so much coverage that we had the luxury to choose from the cream of the crop. The best part was that the mobile footage was seamlessly integrated into the show.
We’ve found two points that are crucial to successfully using mobile video to make TV programming: Relying heavily on mobile footage will definitely decrease the cost of your video production, but you still can’t skimp on editorial (The volume of footage we had to sift through was intense); and let your viral segments become the source material for the broadcast piece. Our online videos were also used as story segments for TV, which turned them into reusable content we just remixed in various channels.
Despite all the pixilated and hard-to-hear virals on YouTube, we’re starting to see more and more that look great, and eventually the quality question will be a thing of the past. Smaller, more powerful media devices mean that content can be created faster and cheaper. Clients know this and they’re already asking for it.
By embracing a broad viral strategy, the result of our recent campaign was that MTV got a show about young creatives addressing climate change, Nokia received rich, branded content for viral and broadcast, and we turned mobile and viral content into an internationally distributed TV show. Not bad for a week in Cannes.
Howard Pyle is creative director of Local Theory, New York (howard@localtheory.com).
