My top viral advertisement videos of 2010

Jan 04, 2011

Table of contents:

1. Old Spice
2. Danny MacAskill - “Way Back Home”
3. Nike - “Write The Future”
4. Tipp-ex - “Shoot the bear”
5. Google Chrome Speed Tests
6. Yeo Valley
7. Will it blend? - iPhone 4
8. Dot. The world’s smallest stop-motion animation character shot on a Nokia N8

So 2010 has been a pretty huge year for viral advertisement videos. Here is my round up of my favourite videos of 2010. This is by no means based upon success, purely my favourtites. Hope you enjoy…

Old Spice

So who could forget about the Old Spice campaign? What Old Spice did was truly fantastic, but most importantly they did if first. The Old Spice campaign created a whole new way of interacting with the audience as part of a viral video campaign. By creating the reply videos, and in such a way that maintained the theme of the campaign, Old Spice broke new ground and deservedly had huge success.

Danny MacAskill - “Way Back Home”

My personal favourite video of the year. RedBull have been extremely clever in the production of the “Way back home” video by creating a beautiful and dramatic shoot of Danny MacAskill’s talent. A video like this cries out to be shared on the Internet, which reflects the views the video has already achieved. Beautifully shot, with a equally beautiful and fitting score, this video is extremely easy to watch again and again. This is what internet advertising should be all about. I would love to see the likes of RedBull or other sport sponsors put more money into creating videos such as this and help showcase the talents of people such as Danny.

Nike - “Write The Future”

Another fantastic online video from Nike showcasing some of their most high profile stars ‘seizing the opportunity’ for greatness. Ironically, each and every sports star featured in the video has went on to have a terrible year in sport. Curse of the video?

Tipp-ex - “Shoot the bear”

For the full experience, go to, https://www.youtube.com/user/tippexperience.

Tipp-ex have taken the old Subservient Chicken skit from Burger King and given it a new twist by having the campaign directly integrated in to YouTube. Although the idea is not a new one, the execution was brilliant.

Google Chrome Speed Tests

A clever video from Google showing the impressive speeds for loading web pages that their browser, Chrome, offers. From the videos Google have produced in the past for launching new products this is certainly the best.

Yeo Valley

I’m not sure where this advert originated but it deserves a mention for the huge amount of views it has received on YouTube to date. It’s really good to see a brand like Yeo Valley producing an advert of this quality. There’s nothing worse than a half arsed attempt. Although the pseudo rap video advertisement format has been done before, I think Yeo Valley have done really good job with this effort.

Will it blend? - iPhone 4

You can’t really talk about online video advertising without mentioning “Will it blend?”. This video for the iPhone 4 is another fantastic video. Clearly a lot of effort goes into shooting and producing the “Will it blend?” videos, and damn those blenders are powerful!

Dot. The world’s smallest stop-motion animation character shot on a Nokia N8

Nokia have really been putting a lot of effort into re-launching themselves to compete with the likes of Apple and Android. Dot is a video that has been shot entirely on a Nokia N8 smartphone. I really like videos like these that really show the potential of new products pre-launch. Although Nokia still has a long way to go in order to catch up, I think by producing content like this, they will get a lot of fans!

What are you favourite viral advertisements of 2010? Leave a comment!