It’s been awhile since I’ve seen a successful branded viral video campaign that clearly featured the brand’s name or logo. Going viral with branded content is one of the biggest challenges for viral video marketers these days and usually if a video even mentions the name of the product or service that it is promoting then it will most likely turn into a commercial-gone-bad. Only a very few branded video marketing campaigns go viral and that is because they are either innovative, like Old Spice, or they play it safe and use a fool-proof “viral recipe”, such as Red Bull did.
The Skittles campaign from earlier this year, which consists of a series of videos. Each video instructs viewers to place the tip of your index finger onto a marked spot within the video’s frame and keep in there while watching the video.
It is this extra step that gives you, the viewer, a very unique viewing experience. While most of the videos in this new Skittles campaign have several hundred thousand views on YouTube, there is one particular one that has over 3 million. It is entitled “Skittles Touch: Cat” and it is the most successful one out of the bunch.It is fresh, smart, funny, entertaining, and engaging, It causes the viewer to have reactions that a regular video wouldn’t spark because it plays with the viewer’s senses.
It’s a combination of creative viewer engagement and edgy comedy concept that makes this campaign a big win. The viewer physically connects to the video by touching a spot of the screen that is marked with a Skittle (clever product placement) and the two characters licking that spot create the illusion of your finger being licked.
Any great viral video needs to do three things to succeed:
Grab the viewer’s attention
Hold the viewer’s attention
Create an emotional reaction in the viewer
If you can do all three of those things, you will likely go viral. Problem is… it’s not easy to do all three. But Skittles did it.