I've always contended that "viral" videos are the lazy marketer's guide to "new marketing". Simply put: great content will naturally be "viral" and by "viral", I mean shared, passed along and forwarded to others.
This week, I am at Stanford University (admittedly the closest I'll ever get to a degree at this prestigious academic institution) and their GSB with a group of clients. I had the privilege of kicking off the week-long program with two keynotes on "The Changing World" and "Flip the Funnel". For the rest of the week, Powered helped facilitate a series of "learning by doing" exercises to give attendees a unique first-hand look at experiencing some of the digital and social technologies, platforms and trends for themselves.
One of them included a make-your-own-viral-video or put differently, the ability to create a piece of content which had the most potential to be passed along.
In a sense that's what I'm about to do right now i.e. show you the videos (a little bit of influencer outreach meets influencer outreach) and invite you to continue to spread, tweet and post the love to your communities if you are so inclined.
...but there's another angle here as well - to ask you the question: can you predict "virality" and success in this increasingly digital, connected and social world? Watch the videos for yourselves and then answer the questions: which video SHOULD win and which video WILL win? Of course you could choose the same video twice. If you like, explain or justify your reasoning/rationale.
Whereas we're judging the videos based on views, content and social seeding strategy...for this exercise, let's just focus on views.
Try not to look at views as they currently stand.
Our cut off is around 5pm PST on Friday, but of course the videos will continue to enjoy the wagging effects of the long tail (so you can weigh in whenever)
And so without further ado...