Cutwater's Viral Ventures: What Works Online?

LOS ANGELES Quickly following its May debut, Ray-Ban's "Catch" became one of the most-popular sponsored viral videos. (It now has had about 11 million views globally, according to Los Angeles-based Feed Company.) The agency behind the video, Omnicom's Cutwater, is now hoping to discover what, exactly, made it successful by experimenting with the seeding of the sequel, "Bobbing for Glasses."For "Catch"—which showed one man supposedly using his face to catch a pair of Wayfarers thrown by another man from increasingly ridiculous heights—the San Francisco shop used seeding company Feed to place the video in front of key bloggers, forums, newsgroups, large portals and the editors of the biggest viral sites. According to Josh Warner, Feed president, there has been no paid placement, but "Catch" has gotten nearly continual nurturing from a half-dozen of his employees.In contrast, "Bobbing"—which shows the same guys dunking their heads in water buckets and retrieving Ray-Bans—was not marketed nearly as aggressively. Instead, it was made available, also via Feed, to a select mix of small sites where "Catch" had been posted, new sites that had ignored it, and bloggers who had earlier passed "Catch" along. "We sent them a 'Benzo and Steve are back' message," Warner said, referring to stars and creators Ben Kaller and Steve Hanft.The experiment "is about listening to and tracking what's going on [online]," said Chuck McBride, ecd at Cutwater. "We know what works on TV. But we're still learning what works in viral. The research is in the infancy stage."The agency also wanted to determine the extent to which the likability of the characters could carry "Bobbing," said Travis Britton, Cutwater cd. "We wanted to see if a [viral] sequel has legs, and see if characters could drive it," he explained. "'Catch' put a lot of grease on the skids. But does everything need grease going in?" asked McBride. The results thus far suggest that Ray-Ban, at least, could benefit from aggressive seeding. "Bobbing" launched Monday, July 16. After four days, it had 80,000 Web views, according to Feed (nearly 30,000 on YouTube). By comparison, four days after "Catch" launched, it had been viewed 1.3 million times across the Web, according to Feed. This included two days of being a featured video on YouTube, thanks to Feed's efforts.And interestingly, "Karate Chop," a pre-"Catch" video not featuring the two popular actors that Cutwater instructed Feed to upload to the least number of sites, has languished at about 2,000 views, said Warner. More experimentation will be done, McBride said. "The research is about listening and tracking what's going on, to exploit the [viral video] trend or get off it," he said. "Part of the reason we spread out the executions is to get preliminary feedback and see what's sticky."Britton added that the agency has already picked up valuable insight into what content works and what doesn't over the course of the campaign. He's convinced that the kind of content that works online belongs to one of three genres: "You have to engage by the fucked-up nature of it, the 'how did they do it?' factor, or the completely unexplainable random idea, like a squirrel turning his head that makes everyone laugh." Britton said he favors "happy" programming: "Keeping it light and fun is the key—what will make people laugh in a Skittles [commercial] way."

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Cutwater's Viral Ventures: What Works Online?

Gregory Solman

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Gregory Solman