Context

Moose on the loose

Arctic Cat Snowmobiles launched mooseontherun.com last summer to create enthusiasm and, ultimately, get potential buyers pumped up for the upcoming winter season. The website was inspired by and continues the story of Arctic Cat's television spot "Joyride," which features two snowmobilers who run into unexpected trouble on the trail. Source.

Most notable of the features on the website is the video section, also featuring the "Joyride" 30 sec TV spot. No less than nine different videos are available, each of them telling a different part of the "Moose on the Run" saga. It's more than just outtakes or could-have-rans on TV. Each video nicely integrates the Arctic Cat brand, without being artificial. In other words, they don't fall into the trap of conceiving viral videos that could have served for any brand. You know them, a "nice-looking" clip with just a brand signature at the end.

Also, the "Moose Hunt" game is worth a visit, and don't forget the "Moose Photos," which are pretty amusing. The site design is also great. But, I just wondered why they did not call it "mooseontheloose.com". OK, DN already taken.

Ford Viral Movies

In an attempt to go viral, Ford Belgium has just launched www.lookingforamiracle.be.
The site holds three short funny clips, a forward-to-a-friend and a tune-in-for-more form. The latter will keep you posted when Ford releases a new movie.

The viral site builds further upon the "Forddoesmiracles"-campaign that featured the much-talked-about Talking Ad (see previous posting). It's the first series of viral movies that Ford Belgium has ever released. The current plan is not to run them on TV and they are not supported by any online media plan. I know, because I'm an accomplice.

I hope you enjoy the clips.

Sega Super Monkey Ball Deluxe Webisodes

Sega, along with on-line ad agency Mekanism, conceived MyBigBall.com, which chronicles "The true adventures of Chad, the guy who was so into Super Monkey Ball Deluxe, that he decided to live in a ball."

The site features six one-minute video clips, in which Chad, a college student, is literally living his life inside of a giant ball. Episodes include "Class," where Chad rolls down the lecture hall desks after being unable to fit into a seat, and "Swim Meet," where he tries in vain to run across the water inside his giant ball.

It is always difficult developing a viral campaign based solely on 'humor' without using ingredients like 'sex' and 'violence'. Therefore, the campaign has to be genuinely funny, while trying to appeal to a broad audience. An extremely difficult exercise, but I think that Sega has succeeded with this campaign. Or as AdWatch states : "The MyBigBall campaign has almost assuredly secured its place as a contender as one of the year's best marketing campaigns."

Source: GameDailyBiz

The Small 'Big Ad' Spoof - made in Belgium

What can you do as a small Belgian group of performers who's motto is : 'Don't take anything too seriously' ? Well, Studio Muscle created a spoof version of  a recent viral hit : they took the Big Ad from Carlton Draught and shot their own Small Ad.

And on their blog, they've added a competition element to it : every 37th subscriber to Studio Muscle's mailing list will receive a bottle of beer with 'authentic' Muscle label. If you can guess which beer is in the bottle, you'll receive another one. Respect!

Fellow interactive marketers, pay attention to these guys ... They are so well on target with their message and mechanic. By far, the best Belgian viral marketing case, I've seen so far. Oh, and they got mentioned on Adland. Respect²!

Geen tralala - Pas de chichi

Finally, I can add one of the first viral teasing campaigns on the Net in Belgium : http://www.geentralala.be (Dutch version) or http://www.pasdechichi.be (french version). Not sure what the brand behind the campaign is (dns search only reveals that - I think - an employee of Emakina registered the domain), but that's exactly the intention of a teasing campaign.

The campaign is executed according all the rules: movies were converted to a user-friendly flash format, it holds the obliged forward-to-a-friend form, but also (!) a keep-me-posted-for-more-movies form. I did subscribe, because I'm curious to see more ... and to find out who is behind this campaign.

Update 26/8 :  Hey, I got an e-mail revealing Ugly Duck as being the low-cost Proximus mobile service, but I still did not receive any other movies. So, they launch it with a lot of "tralala", but they don't send me what they have promised me. Ugly, indeed.

John Kevin and King Coach

Here are two french viral sites that have one thing in common:  they both use a 'coach' character in their viral movies.

John Kevin, "coach de fabrication française aux méthodes americaines", solves all your problems on the French iDTGV train, while King Coach teaches you how to communicate more efficiently without using Post-it solutions of 3M.  Hilarious movies!

Get a job. Or click.

A viral execution from VerizonWireless that I've heavily appreciated - because of these 3 points:

1) It holds all the ingredients to speak to the hearts of the target audience (I presume late teens and early twentiers) : humor, easy to understand, recognizable and predictable situations, but yet enough surprise, ...

2) The message is very clear : you don't need a job when using the VerizonWireless services for text and picture messaging, because it's so cheap.

3) The mechanics used to spread the message are well-chosen : a dedicated, memorable url : www.reallybadjobs.com, a movie in Flash format integrated within a nicely designed page making it accessible for nearly everybody and a send-to-a-friend form to promote pass along. Because of this particular setup, the agency behind the campaign can give exact numbers for the viral spread of the message (# visits, # downloads, # pass alongs).

First babies, now dogs - viral from Olympus

What's going on at Olympus ? First (23rd May) they launch a viral site with a couple of movies with red-eyed babies, they recall it (a week later) - source : AdLand - and yesterday, they've launched a new series of viral movies with distorted dogs, cropped tourists and a blurry boy ...

Check the sites at :

• http://www.distorteddog.com
• http://www.croppedtourists.com
• http://www.blurryboy.com
• http://www.redeyedbaby.com (no longer exists - AdLand however has a copy of the movie here and apparently the 'Suits' at Olympus have been complaining about this - see discussion trail on the same page)

Whether you like the movies or not, they suggest that Olympus offers a solution to common problems with digital photography : blurred, cropped an/or distorted pictures. Perhaps, the 'Suits' at Olympus discovered that their cameras can't offer a solution to red-eyed pictures after all and that's why they removed the first series ;-)

www.hotel-et-consequences.com

Viral execution from Accorhotels.com

http://www.hotel-et-consequences.com (in French only!) contains 2 viral movies showing typical situations you might encounter in hotels and that you would like to avoid. It's funny and surely demonstrates the benefits of booking a room at the Accor Group.

Through the forward-to-a-friend function on the site, you can send a movie flyer to a friend. Very original and teasing, just like the url they've picked !

What does your flag mean?

Recently, I came across a strong viral campaign - run in January in Portugal, but it has in meantime spread worldwide via e-mail and blogs.

The story 'Power of the Stars' :

A Norvegian diplomate, called Charung Gollar, was asked by the United Nations to present his point of view on the world economic and social issues. He used some county flags to express his ideas and called his presentation : Power of the Stars. His presentation was simple and effective. He received a lot of applause and he's now nominated for Nobel price of Political Marketing.

The agency behind it :

FCB Portugal - more info on http://www.brazilianartists.net/home/flags/index2.htm

The flags - click to discover the subtle messages (using real data from UN website) :