Made you look didn’t I?
That’s exactly what Smart Water is going for in their newest video, a two minute and forty-six second long sarcastic take on the “viral video” phenomenon that continues to grow almost daily. Looking through the comments for the video a lot of people think Smart Water is trying too hard with this, but I disagree. Why? Read below:
1) Viral Video isn’t going away – this video takes jabs at the concept of videos going viral because of a few “essential” types of humor or sex appeal (if you haven’t watched the video yet, you’ll see what I mean).
2) Talking about viral video IN a viral video will MAKE it go viral – If you disagree, then look at your Twitter feed or the trending tweets of the day and it’s obvious that Twitter itself is one of the most popular topics ON Twitter. The same goes for Facebook. It has been shown (will attempt to find the source, it’s from a webinar that I have to find) that posts that mention Facebook in some way will actual reach more users and will be more successful if the post is on Facebook. The same people that post comments that disapprove of the video are the same ones showing their friends how “bad” the video is…but they are helping it go viral at the same time they are complaining about it.
3) Jennifer Aniston is still incredibly attractive – if I need to explain more here…well, I’m not going to explain why that makes the video better.
4) So few companies have the cojones to attempt a video like this – a video like this is rare. Yes, similar things have been done before to help a company gain “free” advertising by producing a viral video…but for every success there are hundreds, if not thousands, of videos that fail. Smart Water succeeded because it made a video longer than the usual viral video advertisement, chose to be direct yet cynical in their humor and attitude within the video, and risked a total failure but instead succeeded.
5) The line “I can’t just do that” symbolizes the complete evolution of advertising in the modern world - Not being able to “just say” why a product is great is exactly where we have ended up. Social media and viral video has made it impossible to advertise a product just by saying why the product is good. In order to succeed you need to have more content. No, you don’t have to have physical pain, adorable dogs, or lip-syncing child YouTube celebrities in order to succeed…but you need some sort of intangible that will get people TALKING about your advertisement. Think of it this way, the Super Bowl has always had commercials that people talk about for the next couple weeks. Well, now advertisers need to make Super Bowl calibur advertisements an every day thing…like Smart Water has done.
I just don’t see where Smart Water has done anything wrong here, or done something that can be seen as “trying too hard.” They didn’t try to create a video that ripped off a successful campaign, or even tried to produce their own original viral content. They simply called out everything that is true about the modern state of advertising and the internet. I see nothing wrong with that, and I personally believe that this is a job well done.
What do you think? Is this video a reach or a hit? Post thoughts in the comments. Would you have tried anything different?
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