In this corner “The impossible made possible”, wearing black and white trunks Coca Cola Zeroooooooo! In the other corner, the step counter and music gadget, wearing red and white trunks the Nike Plusssssssssss! (Actually is Men vs Women and the winner takes on Zero).

Yesterday I was walking and I saw this two ads, one from  Coca Cola Zero and the other from Nike Plus. The two companies are monsters and can spend big bucks on ads. However they have a long history a providing us with remarkable advertisements, which are fun to watch and may tip the balance their way when buying products from their category (soft drinks and sports).

Coca Cola Zero “Impossible Made Possible”

The Zero commercial (“Mourning After”) is targeted at Men to communicate that Zero is “Men’s Drink”. That just because you care about calories, that doesn’t make you less of a Man. The ad  uses sex, action and special effects to deliver the message. Although is a minute long, there is a story with a bad guy (The Daddy) the cute girl and the boyfriend as the “hero”. At the end he made look freaking awesome by living in a helicopter, which kind of make us men say “he is the man”. The  “look and fee” of the commercial is from the movies made popular in the 70s that use the “Exploitation” promotion. Exploitations Films

is one which relies heavily on the lurid advertising of its contents, rather than the intrinsic quality of the film. the “exploit” are such as a big star, special effects, sex, violence, romance, etc.

Which were brought back to life, thanks to the double feature “Grindhouse” (2007) by Rodriguez and Tarentino. Although many may criticized the use of sex to sell soft drinks, if you complain or rave about it, Coca Cola just got what they wanted: you remembering the brand.

The Nike Plus ad is not about gender, even if “Men vs Women” is all over the place. No, this ad is about running and competition, and those who enjoy it.

Nike Plus One Minute Version

Nike took Nike Plus and made it social. Not many companies in the world are able to make their products social and successful as Nike did. Instead of sharing pictures, status updates or links, here you share your running data and music. The commercial grabs competition and music, wraps it into a race and tights it up with a punch line (men having the last laugh).

Yeah they use some professional athletes and Eva to do so, if you can why not, however when you see it and feel the music you just have fun. And maybe you get that itch of going out an run and join the competition. Although it will have been nice if they could had mixed up and not show fit and thin (especially girls) runners. Think about it, do people that don’t look that fit will feel unmotivated ? What about the elder? Maybe nike doesn’t care about that, they just want those that are passionate about running, because their products are not that cheap.

Nike Plus Extended Version

Recently I wrote a post on the Kobe Bryant Jumping over a car video, in addition to other stuff concerning viral videos. As you can see, that video has created some buzz like or not, good or bad, the buzz is there. But when such video, event or “thing” starts to appear as “spoofs” around YouTube, you have nail it. In the case of Kobe Bryant (and concerning the USA market) when a TV station like TNT creates a spoof in their show “Inside the NBA” well that is priceless.

Here is the spoof created by TNT with Kobe Bryant watching it

Funny stuff and Inside the NBA is the best.

But back to viral videos, Kobe’s “stunt”, is on the verge of becoming pop culture. When more videos like the following will appear in different forms, you know you have done it.

Of coarse, like most things, its easier said than done. The key here is to be creative and feed on others momentum, like the two videos you will see at the end of this post. And the create thing of video sites is that you can monitor the success of your video, so it can become a trial and error process. The resources to pull it off are out there (as the videos on the bottom show), but in this media of viral videos, what matter is only one thing: the content.

Viral, real or fake, who cares, at end, they sell, just like sex.

If you think the above phrase is true, then its a good idea you take a step back. Here is why:

If a video creates you the urge to share it, then I ask: “those you make it succeeded?”. Doesn’t matter if they did it because they want to critique it, think is fake or real, if people talk about it, buzz is generated. Of coarse not always any buzz is good buzz, but when it comes to videos, when done well they create brand awareness.

The reason I mention the above is because I stumbled at this video:

It shows Kobe Bryant jumping over a Aston Martin.

It’s a amazing piece of video, like most videos regarding Nike products. You can see at the discussions of the video that some people think is fake, some think is irresponsible and other that is read. But if people talk about it and pass it around, create web sites about the video (see here). The question here is does this video helps Nike sell more Kobe Bryant shoes?

If Nike wants to create brand awareness and be always in the mind of customers, then this might be the way to go. But I don’t know if they see this they will think they can jump, that maybe worked for Nike ten years ago and with Jordan shoes. People today are smart enough to figure out that the above video is fake, since the Lakers and nobody will take a chance to injure their star player on a “stunt”. But still there are people that think is real and the reason for that is that they are fans of Kobe or are anti Kobe fans. Either they will criticized it in a positive or negative way.

Nike has always done very interesting marketing campaigns and this tactic of using YouTube is not the first one. I think they started with soccer and the following add:

Again we have the fake or real discussion, but there are not commenting about Kobe being stupid, idiot, etc. The reasons is because Ronaldinho is Ronaldinho and Kobe is Kobe. But again they create buzz and having 22 million views is not bad as an alternative to TV and not paying royalties to for showing up the commercial.

Nike doing some viral video is different from a small company or startup, that question is “Will it Blend?”. That is a series of videos from a company called Blendtec where they create commercial blenders. To show the power of this blenders he will blend everything you ask for or he can come up with, from golf balls to Chuck Norris and even a iPhone (which the fans asked for).

As reported by this article on Inc.com:

Since the video series debuted on YouTube, retail sales of the company’s blenders have grown fivefold, to an estimated $10 million, up from $2 million in 2006. The original run of five videos cost only $50 to produce and has been viewed more than 35 million times on YouTube.

The lesson to learn here is that if you are going to use viral video or another kind of marketing tools, it should work for your company and not just follow a trend blindly. In the case of Blendtec they created credibility by blending anything. People on Blendtec new this, but how to make people see this and at the same time keeping costs down. In the case of Nike it’s just of maintain brand awareness, generating a stronger link with its customers.

At the end of the day, because of the low cost involved in creating videos for YouTube (or any Internet video site), it can be a trail and error process, but remember it’s all about the content. Do you think Blendtec success will have been the same if they use different slogan or jingle?

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UPDATE:

Just an FYI, i found this article that states the following

“The video drew concern from some Lakers fans, although Bryant wasn’t really jumping over a moving car. He said it was created with special effects.”

Brit Stakston from JMW Kommunikation, presented on the state of mind companies should have when using the power of Media.

I don’t remember much and I wasn’t taking notes (for some reason) but what I remember she mention is regarding something about not getting what the the media mix was about. They say that the Internet is like the wild wild west without moral values and its out of control. And as Brit pointed out that in the real world also bad things happened.

I made a comment on how the company Procter & Gamble fired Axel Bringéus for his blog and how I was surprised. She replied about how the blogger backed out and didn’t defend this ground. And that he might have been paid really good money because it’s not easy to be fired in Sweden.

She made a good point: if your blog or whatever social media creates some controversy and puts you into trouble, the least you could do is defend it. Basically if you don’t defend it you are saying “you don’t care”.

Companies should learn how to deal with these issues and like Brit points out, understand full the media mix. Take for example what Nike did with in 2006, when it uploaded a video on YouTube. It looked like it was made by a fan filming Ronaldinho and showed off his skills with some new shoes, plus hitting the goal post various times with the ball. Based on the report by Inc.com fans first thought it was a legit fan, but then where upset that it was posted by Nike. But the buzz was created and did what it was to do: promote some shoes.