Six things VW???s Fun Theory campaign tells us about ???viral???

The social web is a-twitter with talk of German car manufacturer Volkswagen and its The Fun Theory campaign. The campaign homepage declares its mission statement in no uncertain terms:

This site is dedicated to the thought that something as simple as fun is the easiest way to change people’s behaviour for the better. Be it for yourself, for the environment, or something entirely different, the only thing that matters is that it’s change for the better.

It’s an upbeat mantra and provides the backdrop for a very smart campaign by VW and DDB Stockholm which has seen a series of videos produced showing situations created to make life more fun and change people’s behaviour by giving them a fun option in an everyday scenario.

The most popular, Piano Stairs, has currently notched up almost 1,900,000 views on its official URL alone. In it, engineers rig up a set of stairs in a metro station in Stockholm to mimic the keys of a piano. The carefully chosen stairs were located next to an escalator, and the theory worked – the musical stairs persuaded more commuters than usual to walk up the stairs instead of taking the escalator. It’s been picked up by countless marketing, advertising and creative blogs and has generally met with a very positive reaction.

A similar result was achieved by The World’s Deepest Bin, an ordinary bin into which was installed a motion sensor and “50ft well” sound effect. Personally I think the effect is a bit rubbish (no pun intended) but the idea is rather nice.

So, if The Fun Theory can change behaviour by providing fun alternatives, can it tell us anything about “viral”, that scourge of the social media folk? You bet.

• The content should be fresh, fun and/or interesting. In a world of cynics, deep down most of us like to see people unexpectedly enjoying themselves in an everyday setting. Commuting is the obvious target for this, and Piano Stairs is a great example of creating a situation which speaks to millions
• VW’s videos are unbranded, save for a logo in the last frame. The social web is maturing and in many areas is coming to accept that big brands will be major players. But if you want your video to be shared around, subtlety is required and there is a line which shouldn’t be crossed: people are simply more likely to share great content which appears branding-free
• While many well-shared videos are just funny or natural, brands would do well to follow VW’s example in producing content which makes people think.  Larry Ferlazzo, for example, thinks teachers could benefit from encouraging kids to switch to a more positive behaviour because it has been made the fun option
• The videos are all based on clever creative. However, this does not necessarily translate into real-world shareability. It does give your video a chance to spread quickly through the echo chamber of social media, full of people who are looking for campaigns like this one and are willing to vocalise their appreciation to their peers. This may be a good starting place for the quick spread of some videos, but the sheer volume of views in this case suggests its mainstream appeal has been more important
• While the branding has been limited, there is a link back to VW. The idea behind changing behaviours from lazy/negative ones into positive ones is ultimately to encourage people to change the way they think about environmentally-friendly cars
• Viral is an effect, not a strategy. The only way to achieve this effect is to recognise it as such and treat your content accordingly. That means the creative and execution must both be specifically designed to achieve shareability and talkability. Almost all successful so-called “virals” are well seeded, and this one is no different

The key message here is that while creating a viral video is way more difficult than it sounds and should not be considered a tactic, shareability and seeding should be taken into consideration from the very beginning of a video campaign if a large number of views is the target.

via clickingandscreaming.com

Really great post from Chris Nee at Porter Novelli.

Tango With Added Tango

You’d have thought Tango may have noticed this before going in to production.. Or maybe it was intentional to get people like me putting up the picture because they thought it was amusing. Maybe i’m now just a pawn in their marketing efforts.

I should probably rename the title of the post Tango WIN then?