Most adverts are a nuisance rather than a pleasure, so it comes as a wonderful surprise when an ad manages to entertain as it informs, and the time of the internet has seen many viral campaigns kicked off by just such a concept.
Here are our 4 top picks.
- Dollar Shave Club
The Dollar Shave Club online ad is iconic. ‘Our Blades Are F***ing Great’ has amassed an astounding 25 million views in the last five years. Why? Because they managed to create a video that perfectly spoke to their target market and wonderfully conveyed the company’s off-kilter humour. Michael Dubin was the video’s star and the founder of Los Angeles-based Dollar Shave Club. He’d also studied at the Upright Citizens Brigade (UCB) theatre in New York City, so this was definitely a case of playing to one’s strengths. And it paid off; in the first 48 hours after the video made its YouTube debut, some 12,000 people had signed up for the service.
- Will It Blend?
Will It Blend?is so successful that plenty of people don’t even know it’s a marketing campaign. The Blendtec line is sampled by founder Tom Dickson. He basically blends everything we always wanted to blend, including iPhones, cubic zirconi, super glue, marbles, and golf balls. It’s another success story – the Blendtec YouTube channel currently boasts almost 900,000 subscribers.
- Old Spice
“Look at your man. Now back to me. Now back to your man. Now back to me”. The Old Spice advert doesn’t seem so inventive at first, but it’s the perfect example of a traditional advert that used a unique new medium to its fullest potential. Speaking directly to the camera and favouring quick, emphatic dialogue punctuated by seamless changes in the space of 30 seconds, it could be YouTube gold, except it’s also an advert. Blurring the lines paid off – the video has garnered 54,755,501 views.
- Timbersource
Timbersource’s parkour advert is the new kid on the block, but it’s catching up fast. Using parkour expert Jacob Peregrine-Wheller to cover their warehouse from reception area to loading bay, it perfectly showcases the company while highlighting their ‘while you wait’ timber collection service.