Viral videos with a hint of marketing

By Tanzina Vega / New York Times News Service

Published: April 03. 2011 4:00AM PST

Can a man with a tiny electronic device hack into the multitude of jumbo screens in Times Square and play videos from his iPhone? Maybe, if you believe a YouTube video that has been watched by more than half a million viewers in four days.

The video was posted on YouTube on a Monday under the user name BITcrash44. By Wednesday, it had generated more than 800,000 views and had been mentioned on websites like Gizmodo, Gothamist, Salon and NBC New York.

The multitudes who have seen the video have become swept up in an intense debate around one question: Is it real? Well, it’s a fake. And the reaction is exactly what James Percelay and Michael Krivicka wanted when they produced the video as part of a promotion for the film “Limitless,” currently out in theaters.

The two men, founders of a viral marketing company called Thinkmodo, are tapping into a growing desire among marketers to attract and keep the attention of online viewers with videos that get shared on social websites like Twitter, YouTube and Facebook. The strategy for Thinkmodo is to make videos that viewers will think are clever and authentic without overtly pushing or mentioning a product, Percelay said.

“We’re pushing the engagement of an idea which leads you then to the product,” he said. “It just is a whole new mind-set where you don’t have to wrap everything up in a bow and if you don’t, people are going to be a lot more interested in you and what you’re selling and what your message is.”

The video, Percelay said, takes its cue from the premise of “Limitless,” in which a man is able to use all of his brain capacity with the help of a pill called NZT. The video shows a man in an orange jacket standing in Times Square explaining how a makeshift electronic “repeater” and “transmitter” connected to his iPhone can take over any video screen.

First, he tries the device on two small video screens on newspaper kiosks. All the while a cameraman is filming him as he holds the iPhone so viewers can see how the content being projected syncs with the content on the screen. The man then buys a big red balloon to which he attaches the device. When the balloon floats in front of a large video screen playing a trailer for “Limitless” on the corner of Broadway and 47th Street, the iPhone video suddenly begins playing on the screen instead.

“You are getting your message across, but it’s tangential; it’s not a direct frontal assault,” said Peter Adee, the president of worldwide marketing and distribution at Relativity Media, adding that the do-it-yourself look and feel of the video is also an important element. “You don’t have to make it perfect; if anything, that would hurt it. It has to feel organic. It has to feel original.”

Advertisers have been increasingly experimenting with viral videos. One of the most popular campaigns during the last year has been for Old Spice, featuring the actor Isaiah Mustafa.

Wieden & Kennedy Portland, the agency of record for Old Spice, created a series of videos that went viral last summer, in which Mustafa answered consumer questions in real time over the course of several days. The agency used social networking sites to get questions from users and posted the video responses on YouTube and other sites.

“You don’t need a production of 50 people. You can move the world with three,” said Joani Wardwell, the global public relations director for Wieden & Kennedy.

Krivicka, 34, is a freelance video producer and Percelay, 49, has a background in television production, including a former job as a line producer for “Saturday Night Live.” Neither has a traditional advertising background nor the accoutrements that come with a traditional agency.

The company embarked on its first official project in February, with a video featuring a helmet that could shave a person’s head. The video was shot using an iPhone in the bathroom of a nondescript Midtown Manhattan building on a rainy Saturday afternoon.

The product the commercial was intended to sell, a head-shaving device called the HeadBlade that fits on a few fingers, was not overtly mentioned in the spot. But that didn’t stop the video from becoming a viral sensation — it was viewed more than 1 million times on YouTube in less than a week — and from duping viewers and a few television news anchors in the process.

The video garnered more than 500 broadcast mentions in the United States, Canada, Europe and Asia and was posted on more than 1,000 websites and blogs, according to Percelay. HeadBlade sales surged 31 percent after the video was released, and the company’s Web traffic increased 49 percent as a result, he said.

Part of the strategy is also to tip off editors of target websites, buy keywords and website addresses and use social media to get the word out without being obvious. “It has to be finessed in a certain way,” Krivicka said. “A true viral should not need a lot of pushing.”

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