Ship happens!

Congratulations to former Escape Pod client Mark Andeer for approving this piece of ship.

What I love about this ad is that you can’t argue with it. And if you do, you’re a fool.

But what I really love is that it’s closing in on 15 million hits on youtube. Niiice!

Video everywhere, all the time

Throughout my career i have tried really hard to create advertising that has a legitimate shot of being seen out of choice by consumers. And that legitimately competes with the very best of what’s vying for consumers’ attention at any given time.

That is hard. And has always been hard. It’s hard to create things that really interesting. The path from idea to finished execution can be a tricky one. Ask the Weinstein Brothers!

And there is always a ton of new content to compete with. BUT…the good news is that 99% of it will be uninteresting dreck. So really you’re only competing with 1% of the new content. (I’m making the numbers up obviously, but you get the picture).

And of course the Internet is simultaneously the best thing and worst thing to ever happen to someone who traffics in attention. Lots of new ways for you to engage people. Lots of new ways for them to tune you out.

So it’s kind of sobering to read these statistics… (The audience for online video reached new heights last month, as over 158 million Americans streamed a total of 21.4 billion videos in July according to comScore — both new records for the medium)

I remember ad agencies being vilified in the early years of this decade for trying too hard to use old tricks (video) in the new and interactive medium of the internet. Well, guess what. Turns out video is still the most compelling and fastest way to tell a story. you just have to compete with 21.4 billion other videos.

time to get yourself one of them sneezin’ pandas!

The best thing ever. So far this week.

A throwback to simpler times. (via Chris Roe). Drum set for your keyboard. Love it.

Unboxing a great ad

Not sure if you’re familiar with the youtube phenomenon of unboxing. it’s where people film themselves opening products they’ve just bought and savoring the contents as they see them for the very first time. it’s a bit odd. It’s usually done with newly arrived electronic items, but i’ve seen unboxing videos of people “unboxing” new candy bars and describing the taste to an imagined audience.

This commercial/video for a Samsung phone is the first (and probably only) ad that references unboxing. And whoever did it, did a great job.

YouTube made a YouTube video about us and put it on YouTube because we made YouTube videos that were a big hit on YouTube. You can watch it now. It’s on YouTube.

You can read more about it here on the YouTube blog. Thanks Holly and all our friends at Google-Tube Chicago!

If you have any questions about the machinations of this campaign, please contact NormBilow or MattJohnson AT THE ESCAPE POD AGENCY DOT COM.

The reviews are in!

We posted our latest OfficeMax work to youtube last week and already we’ve gotten quite a reaction from both the media and the public. 800,000 hits on youtube thus far (We did a one-day youtube roadblock yesterday and are doing another tomorrow). And we got also got a bunch of positive reviews. Some were solicited by us and/or OfficeMax. Happily, most weren’t.

Lewis Lazare, ad columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times, laughed hard at our efforts. In a good way!

The notoriously snarky and hard-to-please guys at Gawker.com were effusive in their praise.

And the cool and funky cats at Contagious magazine wrote a piece on the campaign. I believe they’re putting our work on their next dvd. (Memo to self: subscribe to Contagious).

But, for me anyway, one of the coolest reactions has been from the commenters on youtube. youtube can be a double-edged sword. it’s a big audience but it’s a very tough and vocal crowd. and not one that’s not typically hospitable towards advertising. And our stuff is very obviously advertising. There’s no mystery. No complex experiential game involving plastic gnomes with GPS in their hats. It’s retail advertising.

amazingly, there have been several instances of youtubers attacking negative comments about our ads. It usually goes something like this:

COMMENTER 1: WAKE UP PEOPLE. These are not pranks, these are COMMERCIALS. Lame, lame, lame commercials.

COMMENTER2: stfu bitch you say that in everyoone of these vids, noone cares just stfu and go get laid for the first time

..etc…etc

Those are actual comments btw. It’s almost touching in its own uniquely youtubian way.

How do you teach a class on “viral video”?

We’ve been asked to teach a class on viral video by our local ad portfolio school. Which is great. But how do you teach someone to create hits? We’ve had our share of hits, hence the invitation to teach the class.

If i was to say one thing, it would be this: get interested in what other people are interested in. you have to get outside yourself to create hits. you’re vying for people’s attention without the aid of paid media. so your idea better be real interesting to other people. everybody loves kittens, so start there!

there’s always an air of inevitability about hits. everyone can tell a hit when it’s a hit. but how do you know a hit before it becomes a hit? by knowing what people are interested in.

that’s what i got so far.