Digital Stuffing

Another year, another Monday, another list of popular product videos from YouTube. I missed the last one of the last year as there were none, absolutely none in the list. But if you want to see some of the top videos from last year, those that were watched by millions, then Feed Company has a great round up of the ones that they think are the best. The include 2 Nike videos (from 2 different agencies) with Nike Football Take it to the Next Level and Kobe jumping over cars, the Nintendo Wii take over of a YouTube page and the third installment ofWhere the Hell is Matt as their top choice. I’m guessing that all of these videos had a seeding budget behind them – they were made for web video and were promoted to get the right amount of traction and views.

Back to the video views for last week. The highest ranking product video is not there because it’s a current product but because the video got ‘re-discovered’, got posted to a huge number of blogs and is currently appealing to the type of mind that find things called the ‘Wunder Boner‘ funny. For a $5 gadget, it’s getting a lot of attention but I don’t think it’ll be translating to sales. The video posted is from Fail Blog, who actually have a LOT of videos in the top ranked list, from commercials to just your regular silly phone vid.

Blendtec’s Will it Blend is getting into Top Gear territory with their latest. Tom Dickson, their presenter, has bought himself a new Nissan GTR and takes ‘the world’s strongest blender’ for a spin in the ‘world’s fastest production car’. He’s not quite for the chat of Clarkson and co but he makes a good effort

The next commercial has been added to YouTube by Heineken as well (well, it could be them, not sure), but their version is not the one getting the views. The copy below has been posted by Illegal Advertising

Virgin Atlantic sent out a preview email to all it’s loyalty club members on Friday, inviting them to get an early peek at their new ad, celebrating 25 years, the start of the Still Red Hot campaign. As well as new ads, they’ve got a same going as well. The video is definitely a blast from the past with the reference to the brands that were around them (Our Price, Wimpy) and at least seems to equally glamorise the make and female crew members. They’re not web savvy enough to let you embed the video, although it has already been grabbed and uploaded.

The new campaign site does not offer a lot else, just a re-write of the features and benefits of the various types of travel, presented well I’ll admit, but they’re not rying anything new with their digital offering. As a brand, they’re definitely still in the broadcast mode as far as I can see. There’s a Twitter account not touched since Aug 2007. Their Facebook brand page is active, including the latest 25th anniversary offers, but it’s not been treated as a customer service route, only a marketing one, as it asks you to email somewhere else to actually get some service. They’re not looking after their Bebo profile very well and it does not look like they’re on MySpace. My conclusion is that you’ve got various agencies playing in these spaces, but no-one in Virgin looking after them all with a customer contact strategy. If they monitor blogs, wonder if they’ll come along and explain what they do do in the social media space.

Virgin Atlantic (screenshot from site)