Screenhead : Ads: Viral

Over The Bonnet

Ben Wheatley's Over The Bonnet, a short clip for The Viral Chart, sort of a Technorati for viral clips, both in its tracking of viral ads, and that it doesns't seem to work very well yet. Ben Wheatley works very well however, and we enjoy linking to his output whenever we get the chance.

Over The Bonnet [Maverick Media]

Other Wheatley:

· Eat it all up, Billy
· They know what they want
· Licky
· The Amazing Wizards

"If I get enough requests, I'll post the video."

You turds who want to put an end to the interrogations at Guantanamo Bay are simply bad Americans, and Bob Parsons of GoDaddy.com has a whole big page up now to tell you why, and if you really press him, he'll post a video he has of people jumping off the Word Trade towers, because he's just that in favor of interrogation!

Why, how dare he!

Listen, perhaps Bob really does believe all of the jingoistic gas being farted out at his page at the moment, but even so, we're pretty sure that's not why he's calling for tourture. See, Bob has found a much bigger bunch of tits to advertise on than any model's; now it's the emotional folks with hair-triggers on their gulliblity mines who make this dumb-ass "culture war" so profitable for people with stuff to sell by unquestioningly declaring sides and freaking out at any mention of of anything divisive. A bold marketing strategy indeed... not unlike, say, going with a cheesecake-laden superbowl ad when there's a bit of an uproar over Janet Jackson's nipple at the moment.

Here's the Bob Parsons' blog page we're talking about: Close Gitmo? No way!! Think our interrogation methods are tough? Prisoners in the Middle East talk quick. Here's why [Hot Points]

Here's Metafiler in the process of "spreading the viral"

$20 you'll hear about GoDaddy.com in a lot more places real soon. Some days we think PT. Barnum was the only real prophet mankind was ever blessed with.

Viral monitor

Interesting "viral" for an adhesives company, in which a CRT style computer monitor is glued to a wall, and you're invited to feed it messages to show while it hangs around. How long will it stay?!!

Of course waiting for some precariously attached and bulky object to become unglued on camera is a well-tested television ploy, having been used successfully on the Fox channel since they hired Bill O'Reilly.

Reality [infectious]

Wave goodbye

Aides.org, they of the recent kinda hot AIDS CG cartoon PSA, have applied their risqu� sensibilities to the still fairly recent tsunami tragedy. In this PSA spot the number of people killed in southeast Asia is compared to the people who died in Africa at the same time from AIDS.

Aides.org film, tsunami vs Africa [ad land] With thanks to Dabitch

Shortbus Roadtrip

Two guys, Pete and Dave, and a tard trolly hit the open road, a-bloggn' as they go.

It could be two guys we guess.. you know, just two loveable slackers hitting the road for the sheer wild fun of it, hoping to end up on "This American Life" or something with their shenanigans. Of course, when we get mail pointing us to something like Busblog (no relation to the internet's own invaluable Tony Pierce), we spend about 40 seconds trying to figure out what it's a viral for. So far the only product mentioned is Axe deodorant, so we're going on the assumption that the fart in the car no one is acknowledging is Axe. The problem with this theory is that Axe tried sending two wacky guys out on the road not too long ago, and no one paid them much attention, becasue you sort of wanted to punch their teeth out.

We admit to being a tiny bit exhausted with all the "clever" marketing going on... we've yet to try some new ass spray because the ad for it turned out to be kind of a lie. "Hey! Those guys didn't boil that midget after all! It was an ad! We got fooled by the ass spray people! Outstanding! Three cases of your best quality ass spray, immediately!"

·Shortbus Roadtrip
·The Busblog (not Tony's)

Holy Shit! Cows!

Bovine Unite is a viral for some food thing that someone is putting an awful lot of effort into, however no one seems to know quite for what, yet. We enjoy The New Advertising with all of its quirks and machinations, however we've yet to feel actually motivated to buy anything. Perhaps it'll kick in later; one day we'll find we can't go another step without... well, whatever the fuck this is for. Perhaps on that day we'll eat whatever fried turd it was the Subservient Chicken was supposed to be selling us for a chaser.

We feel we should acknowledge the pilfering of Dana Lyons here, who had the cow revolution thing together like 15 years ago.

Virtual Bartender2

Beer.com's Virtual Bartender was probably the most successful of the Subservient Chicken clones, and for little wonder. Virtual Bartender2 follows the Robocop school of thought on sequels, and doubles up on the babes you can give your filthy suggestions to. They still won't do math or that thing with ping-pong balls we like so much; too bad there isn't a Thailand ale.com.

Virtual Bartender2 [Beer.com]

Don't Do This At Home

A fake Jackass style stunt involving fruit, a woodchipper, hunky actors, and devil may care hijinks from today's youth. Wacky! Meant to be a viral for Taco Bell's Baja Blast drink. We admit to not getting how. Also, tacos taste good and look like vaginas; we wonder why Taco Bell even has ads in the first palce. Seems like tacos get you in the door all by themselves.

Don't Do This At Home

Special orders do upset us

A 911 call is made when a woman frantically can't get the level of service she'd like from a Burger King drive-thru.
A firm scolding thusly ensues.

We need this to be either a prank, or more likely a word of mouth ad that aims to succeed where Hootie has failed, because we've put deep bite marks in our own arm listening to this frantic cow kvetch to 911. Frankly, we suspect the later, as we note she mentions the same western cheeseburger product our purple cowboy was pushing a couple of posts down, and this seems like the sort of stunt Burger King-retained Subservient Chicken creators Crispin Porter + Bogusky would pull. We don't at this point know that it's an ad for certain, however, see what you think :

"Is this... a harmful cheeseburger?" (a .wmv file)
With thanks to Joel

Innocent Escapes

Innocent Escapes is Brawny paper towel's attempt at viral marketing where you get to "interact" with a first-person Brawny Paper Towel Man, who is sensitive and rugged, like a real mountain man or condom should be. You can pick one of about 30 scenarios to play along with. Reminds us of Christopher Walken as The Continental more than anything else.

Innocent Escapes [Brawny ] With thanks to Kimmi and Zulkey

American viral

Rex Sorgatz of Fimoculous spoke about what the kids call viral marketing on the public radio show Weekend America over the, well, weekend. His site links to an .mp3 of his appearance so that you may enjoy his sonorous tones, and contains a pretty tight wrap-up of the major recent events in the viral universe, if you're still not clear on what that is (we occasionally get the odd mail asking what the term means.) Also included is a fine list of ad sites to investigate, should that sort of thing blow your particular hairstyle back.

Why I Don't Entirely Hate Online Viral Marketing [fimoculous]

Fair Enough

Fair Enough is anti-smoking youth-oriented group Truth's latest attempt to get out the message that smoking is bad for you, and that corporations lie so they may sell bad products unfettered.
This outing has garnered more attention than Truth's usual efforts, as the approach of goofing on Big Tobacco with a faux 70s sit-com is considered "under the radar" of "today's youth" who are too "jaded" and "hip" to be "spoken to like reasonable people" and so must be pandered to like oxygen-deprived monkeys.

You can watch the so far two produced spots at the Fair Enough website. (Flash)

Sorry, duck's off

Blogger Avitable presents us with some amazing lost 80s video in which Renaissance man Mr.T can be seen snorting coke off of Gary Coleman's nipples.
Sorry, we meant "Mr.T singing a nice song about your mother." Dreaming out loud, we guess.

"Treat your mother right", by Mr.T. [Avitable-isms]

Also, John Cleese bums us out a bit by doing a lame extended ad for media backup. What's up, Basil?

Back up Trauma [livevault]

The Third Place - David Lynch's Playstation 2 ad

David Lynch's 2000 commercial for the Playstation 2 The Third Place is exactly what casual fans would expect from David- namely odd. This is due to creative director Trevor Beattie's enthusiasm to work with the director, the freedom given to him as an artist. Not all of the commercial work David has done is so Lynchian... for example we had no idea he did this rather silly ad for a pregnancy test. An interesting side of his work.

The Third Place - David Lynch - part of the Lynchnet ads page

No Virginia, there are no brainsuckers

Been to the CFGOA marine bulletins lately? Us neither. Probably for the best. Here's a few excerpts :

"Report of a body, washed up on an Alaskan beach, found with an exocell in the chest cavity and one of its limbs lodged in the brain."

"Report on the post-mortem autopsy of an unidentified corpse retrieved at Sea by the USCG. The partial limbs of a creature were found lodged within the brain of the subject."

"Report on fishermen, from the Bering Sea down into the Pacific, pulling up strange new creatures-which the fishermen have dubbed "head-squids." Creatures appear to be exocell organisms."

So, game over man, right? We're all doomed? Make way for the brainsucking squid overlords?

No, it's just a viral silly! For some game.

We hope Ubisoft sells lots of games. We also hope that when Ubisoft goes swimming and a real head-munching new form of life treats their heads like Kristy Alley treats a can of frosting at 3 am, no one listens to their screams.