Viral Video Styles & Tips
Posted on July 27, 2009
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As the world of viral video evolves it’s possible to see some similarities among the types of content that’s popular online.
In this section we highlight several styles or models. Note that the styles are not mutually exclusive which means a video’s spreadable potential is often helped by combining several styles.
Here are the styles/models we’ve identified are:
- Repeat & innovate: keep it fresh
- Do This at Home/Mash-Up
- How Did They Do That? Did They Really Do That?
- Outrageous (ly Funny)
- Sensational Story
- Surreal
There’s also a short discussion here, Cool But Not Viral?, about why these popular videos are not “viral” in the Viralskool sense.
Repeat and innovate: keep it fresh
Videos that fall into this category are the Levi’s Guy Backflips into Jeans and the Ray-ban video Guy Catches Glasses with Face. The Levi’s viral is only about someone jumping into a pair of jeans – each jump shown as one shot – but the team tries to keep the idea fresh by using different methods and places to jump and different angles. The idea (of jumping into jeans) is big enough to sustain several iterations. Ditto with Guys Catches Glasses with Face but note how in both the videos the best feat is saved until last – it’s the pay-off, the reward for watching until the end.
Both of these videos have the Did They Really Do That? engagement too which prompts viewers to stop, pause and rewind the video – spurring conversation and more sharing.
Thorton’s “Stuck” by Harmony Korine is also in this repeat and innovate category but rather than go for amazement and laughs, it’s wonderfully touching and by returning to the boy on the bench we get the sense of a story unfolding. The limitation of Stuck is that it creates a warm feeling inside rather than the uplifting rush of success (as with the Levis and Ray-ban videos) and this potentially contributes to less sharing.
Do This At Home/Mash-Up
The benefit of a simple idea or a very clear concept is that viewers can spoof it, parody it and mash it up to produce spin-offs that further spread awareness of the original video.
For an example in this category, take Cadbury’s Eyebrows. It’s impossible to watch and not feel invited to move your eyebrows as the two kids do! Not only does it offer excellent potential to parody with different music and/or different characters but it also invokes the Did They Really Do That question – don’t those eyebrows move to fast not to have been enhanced with computer graphics?
How Did They Do That? Did They Really Do That?
Kobe Jumps Over Speeding Car doesn’t have a powerful grab in the first 5 seconds but because it’s Kobe Bryant, it’s his celebrity and the promise of the video title that gets us hooked. Then he jumps the car and we wonder, did he really do that? Whenever you can provoke a comments war about whether the clip is “fake” or “real” then you’ve engaged an audience!
We’ve also included in this style T-mobile’s Life’s for Sharing although in truth it’s a combination of many styles. For example, it’s surprising, it follows the Repeat and Innovate model – frequently changing songs and dance moves to keep it fresh, it begs the How Did They Do That? question to stimulate conversation and further enquiry, it even has a just little of the Do This At Home going for it. It’s main failing is the weak primary emotion (wonderment) and the lack of a punch line.
However, the strength of the Repeat & Innovate and the How Did They Do That? vibes probably overcome the weaknesses but even so, when everyone stops dancing and walks off it’s a bit flat after all the energy in the video.
Kobe Jumps Over a Speeding Car
Outrageous (ly Funny)
The perfect example of this is the Durex Get It On. This viral scores on so many levels: it’s funny because it’s taboo (sex, animal sex) yet cute (balloon creatures) so doesn’t become gross-out funny and it’s technically cool and makes viewers ask “How Did They Do That”?
We’ve also included in this category a music video for the group Make The Girl Dance. Although not outrageously funny, it’s outrageous in the sense of three women walking nude through Paris! The video works not just because of the nudity but because it’s excellently executed in one continuous shot (very difficult to achieve), it innovates with different girls, it’s humorous & engaging to watch at the bystanders’ reactions and it’s amazing that they got away with it!
Make The Girl Dance “Baby Baby Baby”
Sensational Story
For this format to work, at its heart there has to be a story that generates conversation around the water cooler – it has to be a sensational story. It’s the kind of tale that passes for “news” in the tabloids and gossip magazines – we know it’s unimportant but it’s fun to talk about. The stories provide light-hearted “humorous shock” and there’s often a sense of schadenfreude (which kind of means laughing at someone else’s misery).
This is a tough category to get right. A great example is the video below for Triumph Boats. It looks like a candid clip because it’s taken in one shot, the picture quality isn’t so great and at the end the camera operator runs away leaving the camera running. But it was actually created by an ad agency to highlight & promote the strength of Triumph’s boats.
Another, less effective example, is Leaked Assassination Footage from Russia for the video game MIR-12. The problem with this “viral” is that it doesn’t invoke any strong primary emotions and it isn’t surprising or shocking enough. It succeeds in part because it has a “Did They Really Do That?” interest: it makes the viewer consider if this is actually real footage (although it had us immediately shouting “fake” – the acting & action is too poorly staged and executed to look “realistic”). It’s doubtful that this video was actually shared among many friends.
Leaked Assassination Footage from Russia
Surreal
This is our last category and ought to be used with caution. It’s very easy to say “my video is surreal” when what really ought to be said is that it’s confusing! In many ways, most viral videos have some surreal quality to them but it’s worth looking at a couple of the best examples.
A classic example of this style is Cadbury’s Gorilla. This viral was so ahead of it’s time that it generated incredible off-net conversations around the water cooler that further fueled its online growth. More than just surreal though, the video is inventive, engaging, humorous and touching. Investing the gorilla with human traits gives us a warm feeling inside but it also acts as a hook to keep us engaged and in suspense wondering what’s going to happen.
Still great but a little less successful is Ray-ban’s Cow Gives Birth to Dude. Although it’s surreal, it’s surprising, it’s humorous… it lacks a real feel-good vibe or laugh-out-loud punch line. Massive Yarn Ball Rolls Through San Francisco is better although in a similar vein – it’s cool, it’s surreal, it’s makes you smile but the punch line could just be a little better.
Massive Yarn Ball Rolls Through San Francisco
Cool But Not Viral?
There are many (award-winning) commercials that get shared on the Internet but that doesn’t make them a Viralskool viral. For example, Air New Zealand Nothing to Hide creates a stir because of the nudity/cheekiness and it’s certainly inventive but the overt branding and advertising limits it’s spreadability – how many more people would have forwarded this video were it not an advert?
The same can be said of Gucci’s Flora by Chris Cunningham. Again it’s a wonderful video but it’s not a viral. Quite apart from the fact that it ends on a pack shot, it doesn’t invoke a strong enough primary emotion – joy maybe but it’s more of wonderment than happiness.
Air New Zealand Nothing to Hide