With 2011 drawing to a close, this month’s ‘videos we’re watching’ post lists some of our favourites this year including some new videos that have caught our eye recently. Enjoy!
Google Zeitgeist 2011
What better way to introduce some of our favourite videos from this year than to start with Google Zeitgeist 2011 which reveals the most popular Google search terms this year.
What a wonderful world
We could listen to David Attenborough read the phone book, but Frozen Planet is much more exciting to watch! This stunning series aired this year to critical acclaim and it’s summed up beautifully in this trailer with David Attenborough narrating the lyrics to ‘What a wonderful world’.
Volkswagon the force
Darth Vader appeared a few times in our video posts this year but our favourite features a pint sized Darth Vader who uses the Force when he discovers the family’s new Passat in the driveway.
Angry Birds Live
Filmed in Barcelona, this video from T-Mobile brought the cult Angry Birds game to life, allowing people to interact with a real life version of the game using a smartphone.
The ultimate dog tease video
This topped a list of the most-watched videos on YouTube in Ireland this year. Talking animal videos have been around for a long time but this one is very cleverly edited featuring a star turn from Clark, the exasperated dog who groans and whines throughout the video to let his owner know how frustrated he has become at all of the talk of food.
STA Travel – Move
This is one of three videos from STA Travel which was filmed by three guys who embarked on an amazing trip around the world using two cameras to capture 44 days, 11 countries, 18 flights, 38 thousand miles, an exploding volcano and almost a terabyte of footage.
American Rom
This campaign by McCann Erickson won the Grand Prix in the Promo and Activation Lions at this year’s Cannes International Festival of Creativity. Watch the video below for a snapshot of the campaign which resulted in €300,000 value in free media and a 79% increase in market share which put the product on top of its category.
Air New Zealand safety video
In honour of the All Blacks winning the RWC, here’s a reminder of Air New Zealand’s funny yet informative safety video starring some of the All Blacks players. The safety video was screened on Air New Zealand flights for the rugby world cup.
Fenton!
The irate voice of a man chasing his dog called Fenton has inspired countless spoof videos since it was posted to Youtube earlier this year. In the video, the man can be seen running after his Labrador repeatedly shouting the dog’s name as the dog chases after deer in London’s Richmond Park.
Polite bear waves hello
Grizzly bears are not known for their manners so visitors to a safari park were surprised when this bear waved back at them.
We just came across the European Tour’s YouTube channel which is dedicated to the greatest shots ever played on The Tour as well as the top professionals being challenged to play incredible shots. Check out the below video which features David Howell, Paul McGinley, Marcel Siem and Rhys Davies attempting to skim a ball 200 yards across a lake to hit a 9 inch gong.
Tippex have launched an interactive advertising campaign on YouTube. A hunter is placed face to face with a wild bear with viewers asked to choose the ending using the Tippex corrector. Over 50 endings are provided, we’re working our way through all 50 but our favourites so far are hugs, kisses, kicks, sweeps. If you enter an ending that is not provided then the bear and the hunter go on strike.
SNCF brings a smile to travellers
We have listed a couple of public transport flash mobs in previous blog posts. Our favourites so far are definitely the Danish bus driver and Improv Everywhere bringing Star Wars to the subway in New York. Now SNCF have given the public transport flash mob a French twist. They gave five travelers a welcome / goodbye to remember as part of their ‘further than you imagined’ campaign by staging a series of stunts at Paris’ Gare de L’Est.
LG Play the Impossible
This video features one man appearing to spin the London Eye with his hands as part of LG’s Play the Impossible campaign. It’s a simple idea that we have all attempted to execute in holiday photos brought to life cleverly by LG
Coca Cola Happiness machine – London
Coca Cola’s award winning Happiness Machine is back, this time it surprised students on an undisclosed university campus in London. The students were filmed as they received more than just a can of coke from the machine. Happiness came in the form of a series of surprise items which were handed out from the person inside the machine along with cans of Coca Cola, obviously. The surprise gifts for the London audience included strawberries and cream and games of Twister.
Revenge of the Cat
No doubt you all heard about the woman in England who put an unfortunate cat into a wheelie bin. The event captured on CCTV has spread far and wide online and sparked countless videos and conversations in the media. The video below is a funny representation of the cat’s revenge!
Tipperary cat video
We couldn’t show the cat’s revenge video above without including a mention for the home grown cat video. This video was created in the lead up to the All Ireland Hurling Final between Tipperary and Kilkenny making Tipperary woman Noreen a YouTube celebrity.
IKEA ‘happy inside’
Since we seem to be developing a cat theme in our post this month, here’s one more! This IKEA ad, produced by Mother, features 100 cats exploring the IKEA store in Wembley and introduces the new campaign strapline ‘happy inside’. We love the shots of the cats making themselves at home but feel sorry for the cleaners who had to go in there afterwards! The campaign includes a Facebook competition and a microsite which shows a short documentary about the owners of the cats and the making of the ad.
Cat Parkour
We don’t have a cat but if we did, we hope it would be like these ones!
Giant bubble
Watching this video made us remember how good a summer we had this year. It’s a lovely snapshot of a day at the beach featuring some pretty amazing bubbles made by Sterling Johnson, aka The Bubblesmith, on Stinson Beach in California.
Katy Perry tribute
There are countless lip synching videos on YouTube where fans pay tribute to their idols. This one in particular has been garnering a lot of interest with Katy Perry herself even giving the creator a tweet shout out. The video features Keenan Cahill from Chicago lip synching Katy Perry’s ‘Teenage Dream’. At the time of writing this post, the video had already clocked 5.5 million hits on YouTube in just 2 weeks.
We’re busy compiling our top ten videos this month. We love the front runner so much we thought we’d share it with you early! Tipp-Ex have launched an interactive advertising campaign on YouTube. A hunter is placed face to face with a wild bear with viewers asked to choose the ending using the Tipp-ex corrector. Over 50 endings are provided, we’re working our way through all 50 but our favourites so far are hugs, kisses, kicks, sweeps.
Roger Federer is the face of Gillette’s sensitive skin campaign and this video is a behind the scenes clip from an ad which features Federer knocking a bottle off a crew member’s head with a serve. There is lots of debate online as to the authenticity of this trick shot but real or not we think it’s worth one or several views.
Radio lab and NPR present words
Radiolab have tried to imagine a world without words and this video was designed to accompany Radiolab’s Words episode. The film is beautifully made and a stunning depiction of the creative concept.
Man walks across America
Conscious Minds, the film makers, came up with the idea and pitched it to Levi’s to get a sponsor to help fund the project. The sponsorship included money for petrol, food, production resources and of course jeans for the whole crew (Levi 501s). The team used a combination of stop-motion and time-lapse video and made a Google map with photos pinned at points of interest. Another YouTube video also described their experiences travelling across the country and explains the visual effects in the video.
Electric Picnic teaser
Electric Picnic is fast approaching and to whet our appetites the lovely Electric Picnic crew have produced this video.
Pug sings Batman
This is not big or clever but it is very funny! If you have ever wondered what a pug would sound like singing the Batman theme tune, then wonder no more because you can just click on the video below.
Double Rainbow
This video has inspired hundreds of parodies on YouTube and it’s easy to see why when you watch the original video. We’re not sure but we think the camera man in this clip likes rainbows, watch and see if you agree with us.
Canal+ French football ad
We’ve been a little football crazy here for the past month so, this French ad made us laugh.
Cadbury Spots v Stripes
We are delighted to be working on the Cadbury Spots v Stripes campaign. Watch the new Cadbury advert here and visit www.spotsvstripes.com to get involved in the big game and register as a Spot or a Stripe. Ready, steady, Go!
Starbucks case study
You may have heard that Starbucks was the first consumer brand to reach 10 million fans on Facebook. So, we were interested to view this video of the keynote presentation by Alexandra Wheeler (Digital Director of Starbucks) who opened the Social Media Influence 2010 conference in London.
Bounty have launched a new viral featuring Hip hop legend Run DMC frontman, Rev Run. The viral has received 358,000 number of views on YouTube since it was posted 3 weeks ago. The viral opens with ‘Principal Simmons’ (Rev Run) visiting a classroom of bored students to inform them that substitute teachers will replace Mr Lee for the day. The Paper Towel Gang then arrive to the school in a drop-top, brazenly parking in the principal’s reserved spot and launch into a verbal ode to Bounty’s absorbency skills. This is definitely an interesting approach to a normally unexciting domestic product!
WK have released their case study for the infamous Old Spice Social Campaign and the subsequent response campaign. At this stage we’re all familiar with the videos however, this case study provides new insight around the campaign and throws up some impressive statistics:
The Old Spice Twitter following increased 2700%
Facebook fan interaction was up 800%
Oldspice.com website traffic was up 300%
The Old Spice YouTube channel became the all time most viewed channel
If you had the choice to take the stairs or a giant slide, which would you take? Volkswagen put that question to commuters by installing a giant slide in an underground station, you can see the results in the video below.
Big Bang Big Boom
Big Bang Big Boom is the latest effort from Blu and features their unscientific depiction on the beginning and evolution of life. We had to watch this a few times to appreciate the detail that obviously went into this creative piece.
Andy Murray street tennis
All eyes turned to Wimbledon a few weeks ago with the longest tennis match ever played. In the run up to the tournament Andy Murray and his sponsor Head brought tennis to the streets of London.
Google Chrome ‘Fastball’
Google has developed this interactive fun challenge to promote their fast Chrome browser.
Youtube ‘Life in a day’
Youtube have launched their ‘Life in a day’ project, a global experiment to create the world’s largest user-generated film composed of footage from July 24th 2010. The selected footage will be edited into a documentary produced by Ridley Scott and directed by Kevin Macdonald.
Guillaume Nery base jumping
We’re not sure if this video is real or fake but regardless, it’s still a work of art. It features world champion freediver Guillaume Nergy diving at Dean’s Blue Hole in the Bahamas. There is some nice Sony Ericsson branding displayed on his suit.
Old Spice Questions
Following on from their award winning ‘The man your man could smell like’, Wieden+Kennedy have launched ‘Questions’, a tv ad featuring Isaiah Mustafa. In the ad he has a few questions for the ladies including “Do you like the smell of adventure? Do you want a man who smells like he could bake you a gourmet cake in the dream kitchen he built for you with his own hands?”
Samba dancing baby
This video of samba dancing baby Luiz Otavio made us feel very uncoordinated!
OK Go – End Love
OK Go always attract an audience with their videos, their latest track ‘End Love’ is available for free from their website. The release also features a contest: when you download the song, upload the video to Facebook and get your friends to comment, you enter the running to win an OK Go engraved iPad which contains all OK Go videos and songs.
Mini Xperia
For the launch of the Xperia X10 Mini in France, Sony Ericsson developed a campaign featuring mini vehicles on a tour through Paris over two days.
