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Intel created this great video to demonstrate why one of its prime target markets — gamers and social media users — need the 2nd Generation Intel Core i5 Processor.  I think the video is likely to resonate with this target market.

I have embedded the video below, but you may enjoy it best by clicking through to YouTube and playing it full screen.  File under segmentation, target market, advertising and viral video.

Over at the One Club (a site that promotes advertising excellence) they compiled a “Top 10″ list — the first of many I am sure — for digital advertising.  Featuring everything from classics like Burger King’s Subservient Chicken and the BMW Films series to more recent efforts like Whopper Sacrifice and Chalkbot (which was new to me).  Worth a look – you might get some fun ideas for class.

You may have seen Danny MacAskill’s first video (for Inspired Cycles) where he rides his bike on top of a spiked fence in one part.  Danny has an inspiring personal story as well.  Now his new video for Red Bull (very subtle product placement – my daughter noticed him drinking Red Bull in a couple of place — and that slipped by me) is at the top of this week’s AdAge Viral Video chart.  While the video is a real piece of art with beautiful scenery and great music, at 7:43 it might be too long to show in class.

If you overlook the annoying background music (and the dry narrator voice), this video (4:02 long) provides a pretty good example of integrated marketing communications — with an emphasis on social media.  Skin care and acne medication Clearasil targets teens.  And where are you likely to find them – online of course.  So Clearasil’s ad agency developed a group page at the popular Russian social media site Vkontakte.ru (think Facebook clone – even looks like Facebook).  Users uploaded and shared photos, videos, and stories — motivated by a contest.  They also designed branded apps — like one that used a marker that looked like a tube of Clearasil which allowed teens to remove pimples from photos.  The site was also supported by traditional media — often designed to push people toward the website.

Plenty of good results reported as well — in one year:  1) users uploaded more than 13,000 photos, 2) posted more than 120,000 comments, 3) more than 500,000 people participated in the group or used the app at the social network, and 4) sales grew 30% over the year.

Great example of social media, integrated marketing communications, in an international market.

Clearasil: 4cab36b21ac140.39603595 from BeesAwards on Vimeo.

Many moms can relate to this story – “Mom always does her very best.  But, face it, motherhood is never easy.”  Consequently, many are likely to enjoy the video — and pass it along to their friends.  I like the idea of a more targeted viral video.  It also fits into a campaign by 8th Continent that you can find at  the brand’s Facebook page.

Potential in-class exercise when covering promotion objectives.  Show the class the video and Facebook page and ask them to tell you the promotion objectives.  You could ask what they think of the execution, whether the campaign will work, and how it might be improved.  Also posted at Learn the 4 Ps.

Are you familiar with the Will it Blend video series from blender-maker Blendtec?  Will it Blend is one of the granddaddies of viral video. The ongoing campaign (the latest video is the 100th in the series) has more than 117 million views as of July 2010. The background story is great — you can get some background at “willitblend.com:  Speaking through YouTube,” (Forrester empowered blog, July 10, 2007) or via a pretty detailed Wikipedia page that includes a list of all 100 different episodes.    See more videos at the Will it Blend site or search it on YouTube.

The viral videos are funny, but each reinforces the positioning of a $400 blender.  The humor gets the videos “pass along.”  Will it Blend has been quite successful achieving at least two promotion objectives – building awareness and reinforcing positioning.

Here at Teach the 4 Ps, we have enjoyed following the success of Old Spice’s viral campaign.  Well, now we see the inevitable combination of these two favorites — and we find it pretty funny.  It will probably be more fun to show in class if you have previously viewed and talked about the original Blendtec/Will it Blend story.  I have shown both in my classes — and plan to show the new video in class this week.

I really enjoy Jonah Lehrer’s science writing.  His books, articles and Blog (The Frontal Cortex at Wired magazine) are among my favorite readings.  He has a talent for identifying interesting scientific findings, boiling them down to their essence, and then communicating them in an accessible manner.  Some of Lehrer’s favorite topics are decision making.

A recent blog post “The Buzz on Buzz” describes a study by Northwestern University professor Brian Uzzi and colleagues on how buzz or word-of-mouth spreads.  Uzzi’s findings suggest that word-of-mouth is important — at least for movies — and suggest marketing managers reconsider their promotion budget.

The new buzz research has important implications for marketing. While the old model of advertising is all about reaching individual consumers—that’s why companies spend millions for a 15-second Super Bowl ad—Mr. Uzzi argues that future strategies should focus on getting consumers to spread the message themselves. “Thanks to social-networking sites, kids today are more connected than ever,” he adds. “They’re also much better at ignoring conventional ads, which means that the only way to reach them is with buzz.”

Posting a video that demonstrates a product can be an inexpensive way to show how a product works.  Not all videos need to be viral — funny and passed along.  A good video demonstration on a company website serves the same purpose, though you have to have traffic at your website.  Anyway, here is an older (is more than a year old actually “older”) post at the Marketing With Meaning, blog “Product Demos with Meaning,” (May 20, 2009).  This video does a great job demonstrating what is different about the new Dyson Air Multiplier Fan.

I really like this new viral video, ‘A hunter shoots a bear!” The viral video for Tipp-Ex (a German brand of correction fluid – think Wite Out) got more than 2 million hits in one week to jump to number one on the AdAge Viral Video Chart (September 10).  The video is funny (if you get by all the cursing) and integrates the product in an interesting way.

I had the hunter “kiss” and “eat” the bear – what can you get to work?  This will make more sense when you have seen the video.

WARNING:  the video contains a lot of cursing which is not bleeped out.

Here at Teach the 4 Ps we have reported a few times on Old Spice and the wildly successful viral video campaign for Old Spice – “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like.”  See our previous posts “Old Spice Commercial Goes Viral…” (Teach the 4 Ps, March 15, 2010) and “Old Spice Revitalizes the Brand with Trendy Advertisements,” (Teach the 4 Ps, July 5, 2010).

Here is an update — the campaign seems to be working to sell more Old Spice.  We knew the viral videos generated views and now we know that sales of Old Spice are going up as well, see “Old Spice Campaign Smells Like a Sales Success, Too” (Brandweek, July 25, 2010).

Now Old Spice and its star Isaiah Mustafa have stormed to the top of the Ad Age Viral Video chart hitting #1 with almost 3 million views in one week in July (and more than 11 million as of this post).   The latest viral video is more of the same but different.

That could be a nice video to show the first day of class — at least the young women in your class will like it.  You could show one of the Axe ads (search YouTube for ideas) to appeal to some of the young men in your classes.