I noticed this video was everywhere last week as I was seeding my own video "Sexy Rubik's Cube Solve" every site I went to submit it to this was already there and gaining views fast. I liked it, a unique social experiment.
But now after almost 5 million views (and one of the top videos around the world) Rear View Girls has been revealed as a viral for Levis? Was the plan to sit back and wait for it to succeed before attaching the brand to it? Did Levis this that having the brand involved would hurt the views?
Maybe Levis need to check out what Samsung has been doing with their viral videos. Millions of views AND the brand right there from the start (well the end of the video on some) but that didn't stop it going "viral".
Ray Ban have been doing this with their Never Hide films. This time the branding is a little more subtle but it's all about the product.
I'm not hating on the rear view girls video (it's still awesome) I just think brands should not be ashamed of themselves and be brave enough to support what is a good video from the start. Unbranded virals with a press release later are useless.
The majority of people who have seen the video will miss the important link back to the brand and it didn't need to be that way.
We've seen an increasing number of Youtube Takeovers being submitted to us so we thought we'd create the definitive guide to them. Here are 25 Examples of Youtube Takeovers.
I know the title says 25 "Awesome" Yotutube Takeovers but we have put every examples we found but the title works better as linkbait. Sorry about that.
Use the like buttons to vote so we can see what is the most liked from all the examples.
If you have an example we have missed submit it to us.
This is what we can "case zero" in the Youtube takeover epidemic. It's original, surprising and really well done. You can grab the elements and throw them around yourself.
A recent addition for the Nexus S. The Ninja's un boxing is not only one of the best executed takeovers it also has a nice easter egg for those that hit the replay button, again and again and again.
Mixing Youtube takeover and Subservient Chicken into one amazing experience. While making ads for White Out is almost as scammy as Ketchup or Tabasco sauce you can't help but love this.
It's amazing how such a small tweak, such as shape, can make such a difference. Altering something as ubiquitous as the Youtube player really caused a stir with this campaign for Cadbury.
This was the first takeover to star a Hollywood star and contains your recommended dietary intake of explosions, guns and cheese.
Studios take note. Getting your actual stars to perform in web advertising makes it so much easier for agencies and more effective. It does help that Stallone produced the film so he had a vested interest in making it work.
Chrome Fastball is a great mix of game and Rube Goldberg machine.
While not technically a takeover we have seen an increase in putting interactive content at the top of channel pages. Such as this one for Trivial Pursuit. Replicating your site assets on the channel gives your content just another way to be viewed. The only downside is the additional cost to do something like this. It's not as "viral" as the other examples.
It's not just Youtube that has been experimenting with takeovers. Vimeo, Break, Gamespot and Gametrailers and many others have given advertisers creative freedom to have fun.
Break.com title theirs "Rumble Trailers" and for some reason has not kept an archive of them. If you have a video or the link to the original Crank rumble trailers let us know.
And for video games and films the trailer is the single most important piece of communication.
Daybreakers rumble trailer on Break.com. What makes these appealing to studios is they don't require any special video to be shot. You are simply extending the experience beyond the trailer.
Let It Shine for the Honda Insight was the first takeover for Vimeo. Again a simple, but effective, extent ion of the video around the page made this video work that much harder.
Someone decided to take down the actual video page !? but thankfully someone captured the Tostitos vimeo takeover for "And Then There Was Salsa"
This takeover for Resident Evil on Gametrailers.com was featured back in 2009 and was the first we had seen with a game element to it. It's encouraging to see the smaller media sites getting into this also.
This Gamespot takeover by the same people as the Resident Evil one falls into the "maximum awesome but maximum file size" issue.
Here is the rest of the Youtube Takeovers we have spotted. Listed in no particular order.
You can't go wrong with funny little characters. This takeover for Despicable Me has a lot of little gags in it.
Samsung 3D Event takeover also features a game. Video embedding as the live page doesn't stream nicely at all.
Ever wanted to leave a standup comedy show but couldn't because you've sat at the front and the comedian is looking right at you. I felt like that watching this. Still I hadn't seen this execution before for Snickers.
Another rumble trailer, this time for the film Firebreather. Youtube would have to be the most destroyed site on the internet.
Ahh yes the Kit Kat ad destroys the Youtube page....
I see this ad for Schick Hydro fills the page with water...
To show me how I can choose one of the many ugly colorful themes for my Chrome browser I can also customize the Youtube page....
The Tooheys Extra Dry ad takes over my Youtube page. Nice syncing with the ad.
This Ice Break Youtube channel collapses to reveal a game you can play.
Here is evidence that you should never get high before approving story boards for a Youtube Takeover. I have no idea what is going on here. Also the auto play trailer further down breaks the experience. Please explain. (説明ã—ã¦ãã ã•ã„。)
This example for the Suzuki Swift is a nice extent ion of their parkour TVC
Here's a takeover of MSN for Braquo a French TV series on Canal+
They also did a Youtube homepage takeover.
Speaking of Youtube homepage takeovers we featured this one for Madden back in 2009 and it's still one of our faves.
We have tried to collect all the examples out there but this is by no means all of the examples. Please submit your Youtube takeovers to us so we can create the definitive list.
Also here are a few tips from us if you're thinking of creating one.
Use a CDN to distribute your file. Many of the examples above load VERY slow or don't stream properly which ruins the experience
Plan for longevity. Don't take the video or page down after 3 months. Make sure you have a plan to keep it up for sites like us :)
Try something new. Just destroying the page is getting old now.
Ad Age has posted up the report from Soap Creative (which is my agency) on Facebook Brand Pages for Dummies which clearly presents some simple to use tactics for anyone charged with updating a brand's Facebook page.
This is like open source code sharing. We hope more people will share their successes so we can all do this stuff better and generally give everyone a better experience. We can all blame all the bad banner ads for ruining banners for the rest of us.
I love this presentation. I went to order the presenters book and realised it was already in my cart, saved from a previous session. The talk goes a little off the deep end at the end but still shows why many advertising agencies and marketing departments need to embrace gaming in a psychological way.
This is a topic we at Soap Creative have been taking seriously for a while now. We wrote about it in our piece for the soDA Digital Marketing Outlook (pg 34). One of the few companies out there doing this is Bunchball with their Nitro platform. Getting clients to understand the genius of this is a little harder. As a lot of the thinking goes into the behind the scenes and the psychology of "why it works", it's not instantly sexy. I predict the term "meta game" to become much more prevalent in marketing speak over the next 2 years.
