Was Tiger's Nike Ad Destined to be a Viral Video?
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.
Tiger's New Ad: What's your take?
The 30-second ad has spawned over 160 unique video clips, over 100 of them derivatives – spoofs, parodies, mash-ups, and the like. Altogether, these clips have generated 7.1+ million views and 15,000+ comments.
The derivatives for the ad began growing slowly, making up less than 10% of the total view count after one day, led by Jimmy Kimmel's spoof. But as more and more people saw the ad, more and more parodies were produced. Now, not only do over half of the ad's total views come from derivatives, but, as you can see from the graph below, derivatives have become the de facto driving force behind the campaign. The top performing spoof to date is Tim Nolan's David After Dentist voiceover with 600,000+ views.
Was this inevitable? Could Nike have known that no matter what kind of ad they developed, it would be relentlessly parodied? Could this have been their plan all along (given that the ad seems so easy to spoof)? After all, it's a single shot on Tiger with a voiceover – it doesn't take much to record 30 seconds of audio and drop it on top of the ad. It keeps the conversation on Tiger and, in turn, Nike. After all, 7.1+ million views in less than a week is nothing to laugh at.
Let us know what you think in the comments below.
