We’re proud to present our latest EepyBird video – sponsored by Coca-Cola. We’ve worked with Coca-Cola a bunch in the past and continue to admire their spirit of playfulness and creativity. Over the years, they have shown a lot of wisdom in viral video, finding ways to give their gigantic brand a relatable, human presence. They’re not afraid to relax their corporate constraints in order to make something really cool. Feel free to leave a comment and let us know what you think!

The great film critic Roger Ebert passed away this past week, and several lists of his infamous scathing reviews have been circulating. One of his surprising negative reviews got us thinking about the trap of high production values. Here’s a bit of Ebert’s thumbs down review of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford:

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19691013/REVIEWS/910130301/1023

“But unfortunately, this good movie is buried beneath millions of dollars that were spent on ‘production values’ that wreck the show. This is often the fate of movies with actors in the million-dollar class, like Newman. Having invested all that cash in the superstar, the studio gets nervous and decides to spend lots of money to protect its investment.”

After describing scenes that took all sorts of money and effort to film, Ebert continues:

“Director George Roy Hill apparently spent a lot of money to take his company on location for these scenes, and I guess when he got back to Hollywood he couldn’t bear to edit them out of the final version.”

One of the keys to viral video is simple, “low” production values—just press record and do it. Roger Ebert’s review of Butch Cassidy… points out one of the reasons people can be scared of embracing low production values: if you’re spending lots of money on what you think is a great idea, you want to protect your investment by making sure it’s dressed up nicely. That can be a trap in the movies. And for viral video, it’s a particularly dangerous trap.

The desire is strong: let’s get several HD cameras to capture every angle with dolly shots and crane shots; make sure we’ve got the best, most expensive lighting, costumes, and locations; and we’ll definitely spend hours on hair and makeup…

It can take a lot of effort to avoid this trap. You have to keep reminding yourself: let’s use one camera; get rid of that dolly shot; we don’t need a crane shot; let’s get just enough lighting, costuming, hair and makeup so that we look nice but still normal…

Over and over, we’ve seen two reasons for the mistaken use of high production values in viral video:

First, that’s how TV and film do it. Video producers assume that if high production values work there, then that must be what works online. But that’s one of the first and biggest mistakes we dig into in The Viral Video Manifesto. Online video is quite different from TV. On the Internet, simpler is better. High production values get in your way.

Second, if we don’t have a great idea, maybe high production values can make a bad idea look like a great one—or at least make it look like a less bad idea. To that, we say: spend more time developing your idea. Make it great. A viral video should be unforgettable. Take a great idea and capture it on video as simply as possible. Once again, high production values will only get in your way.

Roger Ebert points out a third reason people use unnecessary production values in film and elsewhere: to protect their investment.

We got to see this firsthand when our sponsors brought us to Los Angeles to shoot “The Extreme Sticky Note Experiments.” We didn’t shoot it in our studio in Maine with a single camera and two people, but rather, on a set in the CBS Studios with every resource imaginable and a half dozen actors added to the mix. We also got to see this with “The Coke Zero & Mentos Rocket Car,” which was filmed in a giant blimp hangar in California, with Rob Cohen (The Fast and the Furious) brought in to direct.

With both of these videos, the concepts were strong, and everyone wanted to protect the projects by adding shiny production values. It’s hard to say no to that. It feels safe and smart to use the biggest and the best and the most expensive. But in viral video, you want to let the ideas stand on their own. You want to cut away everything that interferes with the feeling that we are there. Spend your budget on the ideas. Make sure you’ve pushed your concepts all the way to the extreme. Create something extraordinary and unforgettable.

It can be hard to remember that you don’t need all those fancy production values…even when you’ve got Paul Newman and Robert Redford.

Trust the idea. Turn the camera on. Just press record. And do it.

Viral video is an amazing tool for marketers. T-Mobile saw a 22% increase in handset sales with their T-Mobile Dance in the U.K. With our videos, Coca-Cola saw a 5% spike in sales of 2-liter bottles of Diet Coke in the U.S. — twice. And Mentos sales went up 15% for the year — three years running. And Blendtec saw sales go up a staggering 700% with their “Will It Blend?” viral video series.

How do you harness the power of viral video for your company? How do you make sure you don’t end up sabotaging the spread of your video with clumsy brand messaging? Check out our top 5 tips, and for a complete look at the four rules for creating contagious content, check out our book, The Viral Video Manifesto.

A few days ago, I watched an online video that blew me away and I immediately wanted to share it with my friends. But I didn’t. How did it move so quickly from being a video I couldn’t wait to tell people about to being a video I didn’t share at all?

Here’s what happened.

On March 8, Justin Fox at Zen Garage, posted the following video with a short summary of the backstory:

Marina Abramovic and Ulay started an intense love story in the 70s, performing art out of the van they lived in. When they felt the relationship had run its course, they decided to walk the Great Wall of China, each from one end, meeting for one last big hug in the middle and never seeing each other again.

At her 2010 MoMa retrospective Marina performed ‘The Artist Is Present’ as part of the show, where she shared a minute of silence with each stranger who sat in front of her. Ulay arrived without her knowing and this is what happened.

On March 12, according to a follow-up post by Justin Fox on Spamventdocument.com, in just four days, 5.7 million people had seen the Zen Garage post on Facebook and almost 46,000 people had shared the link. Zen Garage saw a record 300,000 visitors to their web site in one day. And the video now has over 1.5 million views on YouTube.

When I first watched the video after a couple of my friends shared it on Facebook, it jumped out to me as an amazing example of how strong, positive emotion is a trigger for sharing (one of the key principles of The Viral Video Manifesto). There may be a reluctance to share a video that makes you cry — after all, is it nice to make your friends cry, too? But the overall impact here is positive — the swirling emotions of this unexpected reunion of two profoundly connected people is, ultimately, uplifting. That emotion will get people sharing.

Looking at the four rules for viral video, the video scores well: it’s relatively simple and raw (Be True), it’s not overly long (Don’t Waste My Time), the key moment is a great payoff (Be Unforgettable), and pure, unfiltered humanity is the centerpiece of the video (Ultimately, It’s All About Humanity).

So this is a video that was ready to go viral, and Zen Garage gave it just the right set up to get people sharing. I will admit that I am one of the people who teared up watching it, and I was about to share the video with my friends.

But I didn’t.

As I looked further into the story behind the video, I found, for me, a problem.

While the emotion is real, the setup here is… incomplete.

Looking to learn more about Abramovic and Ulay, I found an interview with the curator of the 2010 exhibit.

Apparently, the last time Abramovic and Ulay had seen each other was not, as the Zen Garage story makes you think, decades before. It was, in fact, earlier that same day. When asked when the two artists had seen each other most recently, the curator replied:

Marina and Ulay have been in contact sporadically over the years. This past summer, they saw each other for the first time in several years on the occasion of an interview. They met and talked the morning of the opening.

While they didn’t know if Ulay would sit and face Abramovic as part of the performance at the opening, Ulay was a guest of honor there. This was not the complete surprise encounter I thought it was.

So, the way I see it, the story on Zen Garage isn’t true. Discovering that break with Rule One: Be True meant that I wasn’t about to share the video. The artists’ emotion is still beautiful. The moment they share is still powerful. But, after learning the true story, I went from being ready to share to feeling misled. Even though the video is still, in so many ways, amazing, I didn’t want to spread a deception.

The feel-good post on Zen Garage will continue to spread, and it may continue to spread faster than the word that it is misleading. Longterm, will that be good for Zen Garage? Will the surge in traffic be worth a certain level of mistrust?

Looking through the comments on Zen Garage, you can see how many people love this video. And for those who learn the truth, you can see a range of disappointment:

“Wow, that’s sooo not as cool then. I took this as the article suggested-that this was the first time they’d seen each other in decades. Darn.” – Rachel

“It’s a little annoying when folks misrepresent.” – Ruth

“well that’s a big lie.” – David

“I saw this post on Zen Garage and could not share.” – Visions of Arcadia

What was your reaction? Were you ready to share the video after watching it? And are you going to share it now? Where do you draw this line?

This is how fragile the truth can be. And this is how fragile the contagiousness of a video can be. One slight difference, even in how the video is presented, can stop someone from sharing a video. I saw, in myself, the switch get thrown from, “I have to tell my friends about this!” to “What video should I watch next?”

When you create and post your own videos, be aware of just how quickly and easily the contagiousness can be destroyed.

Viral video is the 21st century sideshow.

Think about it. The most popular videos on YouTube range from the bizarre to the beautiful, and are gritty, weird, wonderful, bold, daring and often unabashedly strange. Whether highly crafted, or spontaneously captured, viral videos give their audience something to gawk at and that same audience will click away the second you lose their interest or waste their time.

Although there are some notable narrative viral videos (they usually involve celebrities), storytelling is a generally a hindrance rather than a help. It wastes valuable time, and distances the viewer from the immediacy and the emotion, making them a whole lot less likely to share your video.

So when creating your content, give us your unforgettable hook and then deliver on it right away. Forget about story. Focus on sideshow.

Here are the two videos:

An Ice-Cold Day makes many of the same mistakes T-Mobile made with The T-Mobile Welcome Back (13 million views). Although Welcome Back also had its strengths, it failed to score as high as their previous effort, The T-Mobile Dance (37 million views), because of over-production and subtle aggression toward passersby. For an in-depth case study of The T-Mobile Welcome Back, check out our book, The Viral Video Manifesto.

Now, let’s look at how An Ice-Cold Day compares to A Quiet Square on the four rules.

Rule One: Be True.

Like A Quiet Square, this video is classic Candid Camera. Both videos stage an elaborate scenario to, ideally, delight the people who wander into their traps. While both videos are a bit overproduced, A Quiet Square has fewer camera angles that feel more like hidden cameras, whereas An Ice-Cold Day has cameras that zoom around and make this feel more like a TV commercial. For viral video, simpler is better.

An Ice-Cold Day also has many video effects, like slow-motion and blurred circular frames (as if we’re looking through a gunsight), that, again, makes this more produced and less true. Key to the success of A Quiet Square was that it was TV drama stereotypes recreated in real life with a filming style that remained (mostly) true and unobtrusive. An Ice-Cold Day has TV drama stereotypes seen through a filter of…TV production stereotypes. This overproduction distances us from the action and makes it less involving and consequently less contagious.

Rule Two: Don’t Waste My Time.

No problems here. Like it’s predecessor, it has minimum set up, maximum payoff. It introduces the concept and gets right down to business.

Rule Three: Be Unforgettable.

Here, the video is directly competing with its predecessor. As with all sequels, the pressure is on to top what’s been done before. In general, An Ice-Cold Day is louder but not more satisfying. It has plenty of guns and explosions, but more interesting are the clever twists like the guy descending on wires from above and an Elvis impersonator showing up, guns blazing. Those kinds of surprises are what make both videos unforgettable, and it would have helped if this video had delivered a few more of them.

Rule Four: It’s All About Humanity.

This is where the video falls short in an interesting way. Candid Camera-style videos are at their best when showing us joyful human reactions. It’s active, positive emotions, after all, that are most contagious. But this video is consistently more aggressive and less fun for the participants than the previous video. There’s an important rule in theater: if you get a volunteer up on stage, always treat him or her well. The audience sees the volunteer as their representative. If you are mean to your volunteer, it doesn’t build positive emotion and trust with your audience.

An Ice-Cold Day isn’t so nice to its volunteers.

Sometimes subtle, sometimes not, this is a pervasive and critical failing of the video. It begins by literally putting the volunteers in the crosshairs of a gunsight. That’s representative of the attitude throughout.

The first thing that happens after they choose yellow or blue is someone getting shot right next to them. In A Quiet Square, gunfire doesn’t erupt until 1:09, when everyone is ready for something like that, and even then, it’s less graphic and farther away.

Next, the volunteer is dragged into a van and driven away at top speed. Some people may be okay with that, but it’s a violent thing to do to someone. We wouldn’t blame someone for reacting quite violently in response, and the mere possibility of that violence erodes the trust between the video creators and the audience.

Quite simply, if we are worried about people’s safety, if they look scared, or if we’re wondering why they aren’t freaking out, we’re not smiling. And to get us sharing, you want to get us smiling. This video will make some people smile, but it makes us subtly (and sometimes not so subtly) uncomfortable.

The original video, A Quiet Square, has almost none of these concerns. It is far more considerate to people who press the button, which makes it more fun for people watching and, consequently, more contagious.

So in the end, while A Dramatic Surprise on an Ice-Cold Day has some great moments, its production techniques are more flashy TV-style and less simple Internet-style. That creates an emotional distance. Plus the video consistently has a more aggressive attitude toward the people who push the button. All of this, unfortunately, makes it less contagious than the original, A Dramatic Surprise on a Quiet Square.

With fewer camera angles, simpler production values, and a more considerate attitude focused on bringing out joyful reactions from the people who push the button, A Dramatic Surprise on an Ice-Cold Day could have been a much bigger success.

Golden Eagle Snatches Kid is an unusual viral video because it’s fake. As we say in The Viral Video Manifesto, “Being true is a key part of forging a positive emotional connection with your audience, and that emotional connection helps make your video contagious.” So trying to fake us out is a dangerous game to play — and one that doesn’t work very often.

Fake videos apparently showing Kobe Bryant jumping over a moving car and David Beckham kicking soccer balls into trash cans from impossibly far away only mustered 5.2 million views and 1.8 million views, respectively, despite their impressive star power. The stunts looked fake, were unmasked as fakes, and once you know a video is fake, you’re not likely to share it. No one wants to look stupid in front of their friends by sharing something that’s fake.

So with 42 million views, Golden Eagle Snatches Kid has done exceptionally well for a fake.

Viral video is the twenty-first-century sideshow, and the sideshow does have a long tradition of trickery. But online, you’re trying to fake out the collective intelligence of the Internet. Sometimes, that may not seem like much of an obstacle, but the chances are very good that you’ll be found out, and found out quickly.

And indeed, Golden Eagle Snatches Kid was unmasked soon after it was posted. Certainly, when we first saw it, we thought, “that can’t be real.” A quick search turned up a lot of discussion that it must be fake, and soon after, it was clear: it was fake. Now the video’s YouTube description acknowledges that.

So what helped this unusual video go viral? Looking at how it scores on the four rules for contagious content from The Viral Video Manifesto, we find it does well on a couple of them.

On the first rule, Be True, obviously it strikes out. Although the game itself of, “Is it real or is it fake?” is compelling and jumpstarts many videos like this where it can be hard to know the answer at first glance, that game only works for a little while. Again, once a fake is revealed as a fake, the chances of sharing it with your friends go way down. The video does, however, do a good job of making you wonder, “Could this be real?”

On Rule Two: Don’t Waste My Time, the video does very well. At 59 seconds, it’s tight and efficient. It gives us minimum setup and maximum payoff: a few seconds of the eagle flying so we see what it is, and then bam – it swoops in for the grab. Eagle flies in, eagle grabs kid, guy runs over, kid is okay, slow-motion replay. And done. This is nothing but the money shots.

This video’s biggest strong point is Rule Three: Be Unforgettable. The image of a giant eagle grabbing a kid off the ground is unforgettable and taps into primal fears. And even when you know it’s a fake, it’s not like any other video out there. Whether you think it’s real or know it’s fake, this video definitely provokes the reaction, “I’ve never seen that before!” That’s a huge strength for going viral.

The video does fairly well on Rule Four: Ultimately, It’s All About Humanity. Shot in true viral style, in what looks like one unedited shot on a handheld camera, they did a great job of showing what look like real reactions, from “Oh, shit!” to the baby crying. Although they’re acting, which is a viral video sin (see Rule One: Be True), the reactions are engaging.

In the end, this is a rare exception, a fake video that took off online. It is helped by not being an ad like the Beckham/Pepsi stunt, but instead was made by students. Even when you know it’s a fake, you have to give the students at Centre NAD in Montreal props for making something so memorable.

Despite the success of this video, it’s still a better bet not to try to fake out the Internet. Most viral videos spread because of active, positive emotions like laughter and amazement, and feeling tricked shuts that down.

The latest example of viral video as the 21st century sideshow is the Harlem Shake.  This meme has gone wild these last couple of weeks.  It began with a bizarre video from Dizasta Music (11 million views) but a second video from TheSunnyCoastSkate (12 million views) gave the craze shape:

Now tens of thousands of people have followed the same simple formula:

• With a single, fixed camera, shoot a 30-second video to the song “Harlem Shake” by Baauer.

• For the first fifteen seconds, one person dances, perhaps wearing a strange helmet or mask, surrounded by other, seemingly disinterested people.

• At the fifteen second mark, the music kicks up and chaos ensues with a cut to everyone wearing wild costumes and going crazy dancing.

As of Valentine’s Day, YouTube reported that there were about 40,000 Harlem Shake videos, with more being posted every day.  And altogether, they’ve been viewed over 175 million times.

What makes this phenomenon so contagious?

First, it’s a simple, effective formula, so it’s easy for people to join in and make their own.  Second, it scores very well on all four of our rules for creating viral videos.  Let’s break that down.

Rule One: Be True.  High marks here.  Each of these videos is documenting a real event with a single, fixed camera and only one edit.  That’s sticking to simple, strong Internet production techniques that keep it true and make it contagious.

Rule Two: Don’t Waste My Time.  Yes, some may argue that the whole phenomenon is a waste of time.  But all these videos are quick and get right down to business.  The same dancing would wear thin if the videos were even a minute long, but at thirty seconds, they are great bite-sized videos that you (or your kids) can devour like candy.

Rule Three: Be Unforgettable.  Again, contagious content has to be different, and this phenomenon is exactly that.  It’s downright bizarre.

Rule Four: It’s All About Humanity.  Great marks here as well, and this rule is crucial to the success of the phenomenon.  Each video gives us a glimpse of who these people are.  It’s a chance to express yourself.  What’s your crazy costume?  What’s your silly dance?  This formula, like Where the Hell is Matt? 2008 (45 million views), gives a simple way to see how different people make the same idea their own and reveal something of themselves in the process.  The humanity revealed is what makes it fun to see the Grandma Edition (4.1 million views) or the Maker Studios Office Edition (16.8 million views).

Following Maker Studios lead, a few brands have made Harlem Shake videos, with companies like Buzzfeed (800,000 views) and College Humor (2.6 million views) making their own office editions.

Most interestingly, Pepsi has posted two Harlem Shake videos:*

The first is a computer-generated can dancing and lacks all the truth and humanity of the phenomenon. It tries to exploit a popular meme for a blatant commercial. That’s simply not contagious.

The second video, on the other hand, stays true to the formula.  It’s the Jeff Gordon Edition, and there’s blatant branding, but it’s much stronger.  It trusts the truth and just points the camera at people dancing.  One minor quibble: there are two puzzling video effects thrown in at 0:20 and 0:21 where the video shakes and flashes.  That is a strange departure from the simple, low-tech formula and they don’t gain anything by using the effects.  But overall, this second video does a good job of staying true and embracing the phenomenon.

How are these two videos doing?  As of this writing, the first, overly-branded, CG video has 136,822 views and the second video that sticks more to the true formula has 1.9 million views.  That makes sense: the second is much better for the Internet.  It’s much more contagious.

What’s next for the phenomenon?  The tricky thing with a craze like this is seeing how fast it wears out its welcome.  What was unforgettable a week ago can now be old news and annoying. But this craze may last a bit longer, so long as people keep coming up with fresh variations like these:

*Since this blog entry was posted, Pepsi has removed their computer-generated Harlem Shake video from YouTube, most likely due to its low number of views. Sorry to those of you who won’t get to see it, but it’s removal underlines a crucial point about branding which we often make here on ViralVideoManifesto.com: when it comes to product shots in a viral video, don’t overdo it! If people think of your video as just another commercial, they won’t share it.

An interesting note on the copyright issue: the viral video that we first posted was taken down due to a copyright claim by YouTuber RediLataj, who seems to have combined footage from YouTuber Photonvids with music by Baauer. The combination is brilliant, but where does the copyright claim actually lie?