Public holidays can open up a world of opportunities for marketers, with every Christmas, Easter or Valentines Day bringing a flood of festive themed commercials our way. So as expected, with last Sunday being Mothers Day in the US, we’ve seen a slew of ad campaigns dedicated to mums being released.
Entering the Viral Brand Chart at number 2, Procter & Gamble celebrates motherhood with "The Gift My Mother Gave Me", an online-only video tribute to the life of the iconic Eunice Kennedy Shriver, mother of Maria Shriver and founder of the Special Olympics. The video was created by Wieden & Kennedy Portland and continues P&G’s ‘Thank you Mom” campaign, following on from the brand's hugely successful ‘Best Job’ spot, released in the run up to the 2012 Olympic games.
It’s always interesting to see advertisers leveraging the power of celebrity and Eunice Shriver's legacy is a perfect fit for P&G, not only raising the profile of the brand as a major sponsor of the Special Olympics, but strengthening its position as one of the market leaders of house hold products for families.
In a move to promote the ad, P&G has also launched a charitable campaign to raise funds for the Special Olympics, encouraging people to watch and share the video through its Facebook page by promising to donate $1 to support new programs, up to $50,000.
Along side this, Wieden & Kennedy is also running a crowd sourced Twitter initiative, inviting the public to tweet motherly advice using the #MomsWisdom hashtag, and turning selected anecdotes into typeset posters.
Elsewhere in the listings, Greenpeace has launched a controversial attack on Coca-Cola in protest against the soft drink giant’s opposition to new legislation to introduce a plastic bottle recycling scheme in Australia.The crowd-funded ad spot starts out looking like a commercial for Coca-Cola, showing an attractive young woman on the beach drinking from a bottle of coke, until suddenly dead birds start dropping out of the sky at her feet.The video was broadcast on Australian TV by Channel Nine after Greenpeace raised $20,000 in donations to pay for the air time, but has since been pulled from TV after a backlash of criticism about its offensive nature. Never being one to back away from a bit of public controversy, Greenpeace has continued to promote the ad online and the video has clocked up close to a million views and counting since it was released last week.
Moving over to the UGC Chart and top of the list is a karaoke-loving couple at a petrol station in America, showcasing their musical talents in a hidden camera prank for The Tonight Show. The video of the animated pair being caught apparently unaware and performing a pretty impressive rendition of the Eurythmics’ Sweet Dreams has become a viral sensation, clocking up over 11 million views in less than a week.Of course the danger with any reality TV footage is its unpredictability; if it works it can be amazing and the internet will respond much more favourably to a piece of genuine spontaneous footage than to anything scripted or pre-planned. So it would seem that The Tonight Show stuck gold when they stumbled across this entertaining duo, or did they? It’s since emerged that the performance may have been a bit more premeditated than we first thought, with speculation that the pair may have been actors. Never the less, it's still worth a watch.
Entering the chart at number 2 is the first music video ever made in space, featuring Chris Hadfield, the International Space Station Commander who has been single handily making space travel awesome! Ok, so space travel was already pretty awesome, but his recent series of broadcasts for the Canadian Space Agency have now developed a massive viral following and he has become a bit of a regular fixture in the UGC chart. Last week, as his final instalment before he returned to Earth on Monday, he published a personalised rendition of David Bowie’s classic “A Space Oddity”. The clip has already garnered over 10 million views in just 3 days!
