If you guys haven't seen this, away we happened is a short story production that was a colloboration between WongFu Productions and at&t. I could be biased, cause i enjoy most of WongFu's short stories, but this in my opinion was simply genius. Not just the story, but the promotional idea. In case you don't know, at&t is a major telecommunication company. Just by watching the first video, its so obvious what the intendend promotional product was. No prizes for guessing correctly.
Leveraging on WongFu's typical viewer demographics, and popularity, at&t crowdsourced more than 6 million views over a period of 6 weeks. According to at&t, their goal was to improve brand affinity, highlighting the everyday use of their technology with charaters the viewers can relate to, and boy did they manage to do that. According to clickz.com, the campaign far exceeded at&t's goals. True, once the video went viral, there was no way to control who the viewers were, but with over 95% of the viwers liking the series, is that really such a concern?
Do you guys think this would change the way companies make use of YouTube? Or is this doing well because it is fresh and new, and once it becomes mainstream people would simply reject it. Leave me a comment below! :D
I also enjoyed creative pieces created by WongFu :D
ReplyDeleteWell, in fact I don't even know that they are doing this for at&t until you mentioned it. I thought these were just one of those short stories found in YouTube. This is a brilliant idea and I don't think that people will ignore it even if it goes mainstream. This is because what attracts them to the content itself is not only because of the brand but the way they deliver it through the uniqueness found in each stories.
PS: comment my blog :)
Thanks for the comment! haha if you didn't realise it was a joint effort with at&t, does that mean they failed in creating awareness?
ReplyDeleteHey Malcolm :) I watched this too! I thought it was well thought out... but it was so obvious that it was advertising and kind of awkward to be honest.. It was a good effort and I can't wait to see what else they come up with next time.
ReplyDeleteSorry, to be clear, I thought the video itself, the product placement, the acting etc was awkward. But AT&T was smart to leverage off WongFu's huge fan base and skills!
ReplyDeletehaha @emkfblog - true that! the acting for the most part was really awkward. but i attribute it to casting and timing. Since the episodes typically only had a time frame of 1 day to film i guess they were pretty lenient with the takes. But i thought the supporting cast was good! Ki Hong Lee? Think he's a professional actor (somewhat). But in case you didn't know, WongFu is doing another project with at&t! can't wait!
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