Eyebrows Raise The Game on Viral Advertising

 

Last year, Cadburys scored a huge hit with their ad featuring a gorilla drumming along to the Phil Collins’s track In The Air Tonight, resulting in a 9% increase in sales and the man himself enjoying a rare top 20 chart spot for the first time in years. The phenomenal success of their latest offering, however, has surpassed all expectations, particularly when it comes to its viral capabilities. With the You Tube ‘original’ ad recording 1.9m views in only 3 weeks alongside the thousands of other sites and blogs it appears on, the claim by Cadburys that over 4m have seen it to date is probably not far from the truth.

Lee Rolston, director of marketing for Cadbury Dairy Milk, told The Observer: "Television and online are morphing almost daily. We tend to put our first ads in big things such as the Big Brother final or the X Factor, then it's immediately online, which becomes a very fluid, organic process. People tend to interact with the films and make their own versions and their own music. We just let it go and see what people think of it."

This kind of success isn’t limited to commercial brands. Another advert featuring a man in a gorilla suit was released by Transport for London last year and also became viral phenomenon. Within 1 month of the campaign’s launch, the Awareness Test video had achieved in the region of 5.5 million views, against a target of around 150,000.

The advert, which ends with the title ‘It’s easy to miss something you’re not looking for. Look out for cyclists’, was awarded a Gold Lion at Cannes Lions 2008 in the category Public Health & Safety, and was - for a time - the 4th most popular video in the world according to the Video Viral Chart

That’s enough to raise a few eyebrows.