As an entrepreneur, one of the most sought after marketing anomalies is the creation of the viral video.With over 4 billion views on YouTube each day, the opportunity for exposure is tremendous. But don’t be fooled. Just because your video is on Youtube and YOU think it’s great doesn’t mean it’ll capture the kind of attention you are hoping for.
So what does it take to achieve the coveted status of viral video? Is this a phenomenon of chance, or can it be intentionally engineered?
One creative California agency believes they’ve not only cracked the viral code, but can also inject a message within the entertainment.
Introducing Mekanism
I recently had the pleasure of meeting Brendan Gahan, Director of Social Media for Mekanism, an award winning creative agency.
Mekanism has created viral campaigns for clients such as Pepsi, Virgin Mobile, Axe and 20th Century Fox.
Most recently added to their collection of viral hits is the creation of Hovercat which launched on June 9th, 2012 to promote animal adoption through the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA). (...)
The Candy With The Medicine
In order to generate massive views, Mekanism uses something they call “Candy with the Medicine,” a philosophy that recognizes a message is best received within entertainment.
Therefore, the first item on the agenda is to ENTERTAIN – that’s the “candy.”
The second step is to inject the MESSAGE – that’s the “medicine.”
David Horowitz, Mekanism Creative Director explains how this was executed.
The challenge was making something that promoted the ASPCA and made people smile. Ultimately, pets are fun. Look on YouTube and you’ll see thousands of animal videos with huge view counts for that very reason – pets do funny things, and people like watching pets do funny things. We wanted to use that truth as the selling point. But unlike a video a kid makes at home, we couldn’t just find a cat and wait for it to fall into a box or jump on a ceiling fan. If we wanted to have our own cat viral hit, we needed to create something that would have a hook – a concept that could be described in the title itself. Thus, Hovercat was born.”by Lewis Howes, Forbes | Read more:
