Will It "Go Viral" : Steady Feathers - The Most Extreme Camera Ever

In advertising, "Virals" are mildly amusing or interesting pieces of content generated by marketeers, that are intended for people to share with their friends, and thus get some sort of brand message across to the viewer. Those Santander adverts do not fit into any of the above categories.

At some uncertified point, this spreading leads the content to be termed "Viral", or as some say it has "Gone Viral" - by the way, the spreading is usually helped by a large dose of advertising to help it along the way.

Once it has "Gone Viral" this can be added to a press release, and sent to a contagious group of online publications, who will simply paste the copy word for word, rip the video from YouTube, stick on their own advertising at the front, and host it as a news story. Unless, of course, it's obviously an advert (doh), but even then, the clever marketeers can get around this by adding another angle to the story, take this story "Leaked Samsung Commercial "Goes Viral" After Being Derided For Having 'The World's Worst Actors'" (Warning, it's in the Daily Mail)

However, Marketeers have to tread very carefully, as revealing their video to infact be an advert in disguise too early, will result in most savvy viewers switching off pretty much straight away, and those contagious online publications spotting something fishy. Daily Mail again.

Sometimes, brands are too cool for viewers to switch off, the message is blatant, the branding is all over the place - see anything by Red Bull, other than the bloke jumping to earth from space balloon.

In this video you'll notice the phone and camera don't appear until right at the end, the punchline / pay off / reveal. (Clever see, they've tricked us - it IS an ad for something, I thought it was REAL). Even though it has been posted on LG's official Mobile YouTube channel (there's a clue) most people infact will watch the video elsewhere. (Yes, like on this blog).

So, has Steady Feathers, uploaded 5 days ago by LG "Gone Viral" yet?

**Believe it or not, in the last 12 years I myself have been involved in making such videos, the first being the "Stop Bob" getting to No. 1 campaign, in which we had the cartoon characters from The Supermen Lovers video "Starlight" knocking over and killing Bob The Builder, burying him with Scoop the JCB. It was a flash video, made by Jim at Infinite Wheel and spread via Email as no social networks existed. After two days, the BBC kindly asked us to stop it. Unfortunately, Bob The Builder still went to No.1, and the now classic summer smash hit "Starlight" rested at No.2 - thanks The Record Buying Public. Others led to Sonny J getting played on Radio One and signed (it wasn't a rare Michael Jackson song) and the then 12th most discussed video of all time on YouTube, a Global Warning (made for Ministry of Sound) Usually, the best "viral" videos are user generated, have no advertising spend (this is termed "Organic") and no real gain for views, people genuinely share them because they liked them (that's ok) and think their friends will like them too (also ok - it's why I started this blog to be honest, to keep the stuff I like best.