By Kristin Wilcha

The Viral Factory, a London-headquartered shop that creates viral advertising for an array of marketers, is setting its sights on the stateside market. The company, perhaps best known in the U.S. for its award-winning series of Trojan virals that presents coital activities as Olympic sport, is offering its services to U.S. ad agencies via its affiliation with the newly launched Outsider, Santa Monica. (James Rouse, who’s now handled for spots by Outsider, London and Santa Monica, directed the Trojan campaign.) Currently, The Viral Factory with Microsoft and agency GLG, San Francisco, is working on a viral package for the stateside market, as well as with Ford and Oglivy & Mather, London, on a U.K. job.

The Viral Factory, headed up by Ed Robinson and Matthew Smith, launched three years ago in London. Later production house Outsider, London, under the aegis of partners/executive producers Robert Campbell and Toby Courlander, acquired a 25 percent stake in The Viral Factory.

“Robert thought [what we were doing] fitted in with his work at Outsider,” explained Robinson of Outsider’s interest in the shop. “He saw we were doing something that offered an element of newness, and perhaps of the future.”

Before partnering, Smith produced Web sites, and other online content, while Robinson worked in production. “[Virals] just seemed like something that had to take off,” related Smith of his company’s formation. “Especially given the fact that there wasn’t really a compelling way to advertise on theWeb at the time–there was no real rich media advertising on the Web.”

When The Viral Factory works on a project, its artisans write and produce the content, as well as distribute it. While Outsider has a stake in the company, its directors do not necessarily work on projects done through The Viral Factory, although Outsider directors have worked with the shop.

“We do work alongside directors,” Robinson related. “[We don’t work] in a traditional advertising sense of we come up with scripts and then we hire directors and we make them. … When we make work, it’s co-directed by a director and by the Viral Factory. Because of the confines of the delivery mechanism–the fact that you have to work within a certain frame rate, file size, et cetera–we’ve created a new way of working that’s much more collaborative and collective rather than driven by individual directors….Matt, I and the director work as a triumvirate. The best people we’ve worked with have never directed a commercial in their lives, because the tone is completely different. The media defines a totally different way of communicating with the audience. …. The viral senders, those are the guys who direct what we make. We just put on screen what we need to show.”

One of the big differences between viral advertising, and more traditional TV advertising is how budgets are allocated. For instance, with the Trojan work, most of the ad budget was invested in the production, rather than in the media. “The most you want to spend on media is 25 percent,” says Smith, noting that figure is on the high side. “The rest is spent on content.” Smith notes that the Trojan work has been seen by estimated 40 million people worldwide–something that likely wouldn’t have occurred had the client just aired spots.

 

U.S. ASPIRATIONS

“From our point of view, the U.S. is an ideal market for virals,” stated Robinson, adding that the high numbers of broadband connections in the U.S. make for better delivery. “Viral doesn’t see any borders,” he continued. “If a piece of work is good, it goes around the world, and because of the sheer size it means you get much more value for your money,” in terms of consumers who will access and spread content.

“When we make a piece of work that isn’t strategically aimed at the U.K.–in other words, its much more universal, which is very often what we try to do,” added Smith, “we regularly see that about sixty percent of the viewers are in the U.S., so just that figure alone says to us ‘Well, in that case, the U.S. is the best place to run a viral marketing campaign.

Smith reports that stateside ad shops have expressed interest in what The Viral Factory has to offer.

Jonathon Ker, executive producer of Outsider, Santa Monica (as well as bicoastal Tight) and whose purview also encompasses The Viral Factory and its U.S. representation, believes The Viral Factory will be a stateside success, in large part because of the ability of viral marketing efforts to so tightly focus on particular demographics. “The word focused is pretty keen as to why virals are going to be successful,” noted Ker. “They can focus very specifically on certain demographics.”

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