Visible Measures Blog

For this week's Ad Age Viral Video Chart, it's all about the Olympics. Nike grabs the top spot on the chart after debuting Find Your Greatness late last week. Not an official sponsor of the Olympic games, Nike manages to edge out official Olympic partner adidas, who also launched a campaign last week. Nike generated 4.5 million views with Find Your Greatness while adidas grabbed the third spot with 2.9 million views with Take the Stage. 

The lingering buzz of the Super Bowl is finally wearing off Ad Age’s Viral Video Chart.

For years, the notion of "any publicity is good publicity" inspired the creators and instigators of controversies. This concept thrived in a world dominated by broadcast, where one-way conversations were the norm. But today, with social video, audiences can respond to advertising through commenting, rating, reviewing, mixing, mashing, satirizing, and sharing. These response mechanisms allow brands to interact with their audiences like never before, creating valuable dialogues with their core customers. But what happens for brands when the response to an ad gets more views than the original ad itself?

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- It took David Beckham, Snoop Dogg, Daft Punk and Noel Gallagher, but Adidas's "Star Wars" spot finally broke the top 10 viral ads last week. It's the first official World Cup marketer to make the top 10. Why is that news? Well, for a key sponsor of the World Cup, Adidas had been strangely absent from the online buzz, dominated by arch-rival and non-sponsor Nike, whose "Write the Future" campaign dominated in views and buzz.

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Nike isn't an official World Cup sponsor, but its three-minute "Write the Future" video broke the record for the biggest audience in the first week of a campaign with 7.8 million views. That record, incidentally, was by another Nike ad: the somber and strange "Earl and Tiger" ad, which debuted earlier this year with 6.3 million views in its first week.

Tiger didn't win the Masters over the weekend, but he did score a viral video hit. His latest Nike ad, featuring a voiceover from his late father Earl, has been the talk of the town since its launch late Wednesday, just before the Masters began.

The L.A. Lakers took home the NBA Championship over two weeks ago, yet Nike Basketball's Most Valuable Puppets remains at the top of the Chart for the second week in a row. This is in stark contrast to the NBA's Where Amazing Happens campaign, which barely made the Chart this week. This discrepancy could be due to Nike Basketball injecting new assets into its campaign last week, which would speak to the importance and subsequent results of continued marketing support for viral video campaigns. Or, perhaps, it could be due to the staying power of puppets. What do you think?

The Viral Video Chart this week is a gamer's paradise with Xbox's Project Natal skyrocketing over 1,000% from last week to claim the top spot with 2.4+ million views. The campaign was launched in the beginning of June, making its first appearance on the Chart last week with 200,000+ views. In week two, the campaign caught on like wildfire, and generated significant amounts of brand advocacy with more than 400 copies and derivatives (!!). In addition to this viral activity, we discovered a slew of new original assets uploaded by Xbox. Among the derivatives for the campaign, Jimmy Fallon jumped into the mix, unable to contain his inner gaming geek, and came out to play (literally) on his late night TV show. Endorsements from the likes of Steven Spieberg don't hurt either.

The number one spot on the Top Ad Campaigns chart this week showcases vloggers from the Nigahiga comedy group chomping down for Carl's Jr.'s How To Eat A Burger campaign, which features the Portobello Mushroom Burger. The campaign grabbed a record-breaking 3.3+ million views, surpassing Samsung's LED Sheep's previous mark of 2.8+ million. Not only is the campaign the new record holder for the chart, but it swallowed those 3.3 million views in only four days. Wow! Speaking to the power and efficiency of viral video in an interview with MediaWeek, Brad Haley, EVP of marketing for CKE (Carl’s Jr.'s parent company), said of the campaign: “This whole program will be a fraction of the cost of producing a TV ad.”