Chado-Design.com

Sweden’s TV licensing company Radiojanst recently released a new viral video campaign experimenting with emerging video technology that allow viewers to insert themselves or a friend into the commercial. The ad, titled ‘The Hero: A movie about you or someone you know”, builds up with a dramatic announcement about a new national hero who is making life better for the people of Sweden. This new Swedish hero ensures that viewers can trust what they see on television and radio and the voice of average Swede can be heard. Midway through the commercial the hero is revealed to be the viewer because they pay their broadcast fee. The ad shows crowds of people from around the world celebrating the viewer with their photo on billboards, signs, and TV. The idea for this video was for people to upload an image of their friend and email it to them so they can star in their very own commercial. At the end of the commercial it gives the option to make a new commercial with a different image that can be passed along to share with another new “star”. The video was very well received by international audiences with over 14 million site visits within 8 weeks.

This clever campaign was accomplished using viral video technologies like those used in Staple’s “Elf Yourself” holiday campaigns and MoveOn.org’s Glenn Beck satire that takes the viewers image and information from Facebook and inserts them into a viral video where they are appear to be publically smeared by the ridiculous, fear-mongering Glenn Beck. This new trend of in viral videos where the viewer can be a part of the commercial and shared has enormous potential for advertising. After all, one of the main goals in advertising is to get the potential customer to envision themselves using the product or service. Videos like this give the message a personalized look and feel allowing consumers to establish an emotional connection with the brand. It will be interesting to see how this technology will be used next and how it will continue to evolve the viral video.