What is a Viral Ad?

Viral marketing is used to raise awareness of a company, their brand or awareness of a particular product which they may want to enhance. They can promote this in more than one method. The following are ways in which people may use viral marketing:

1. Social Media
2. Word of mouth
3. Websites
4. Blog 
5. Plus many more. 

By using these methods to raise awareness it gives the company time to showcase what they have to offer. By doing this it means that more people will know about the product or company which is being showcased. As more people have an understanding it means that there is a higher chance of success due to the audience it has reached. In addition, there are also different formats in which the viral advert can be shown in which makes it reach different media platforms. If it is viewed in a popular format such as Facebook on social media it reaches it's specific audience.

 

Overall, Viral Marketing is an easy way to reach the desired audience of choice as you can make it approachable to different media platforms. Next, it is an alternative way to things such as a movie trailer. Viral Adverts can be made to include the audience which makes them feel included within the film.

Viral Ad ideas

Viral Advert Ideas

Within our viral advert we believe that we have to incorperate Post-it notes within the concept. Viral adverts are most commonly in the form of a video as they are easy to create and are easy to share arcoss social media. A short video with some sort of post it note integration would suit our film well.

The idea comes from the game headbands, however instead of having a headband on your head the people are using Post-it notes. On each Post-it note they all have the same word "Notes". They all go round asking question but the "questions" are the plot of the story so that the whole plot is asked about. Once the last part of the person asks his "question" the all say "Notes" at the same time.
 

Complicated Aspects

More Complicated Aspects Of Our Film

The more tricky shots we are using in our film are:

• Montage?
• Jump Cuts?
• Stop Motion? 

Montage:
We are using a montage to show the scene where MATT cleans up the kitchen. We decided to use this method as it would show the audience what is happening without showing the whole thing and the film getting repetitive and boring. This can be tricky as we need the shots to match up.  In this scene we are also using jump cuts. These can be dificult as they can make the film look jarring and disconnected.

Stop motion
We are using stop motion editing technique to show our title Notes in the title sequence. We decided to use this technique as it works well within the title sequence. This teqnique has proved difficult to edit as we could not fit the whole word on the wall at the same time. We are considering using a different method to create the title of our film.

Viral advert ideas.

Viral advert ideas. 

For our viral advert we decided that actually incorporating actual post it notes within our advert would be a good idea. Videos tend to be the best format for viral adverts as they are easily sharable on social media. A short video with some sort of post it note integration would suit our film well as it would keep the idea of post it notes present within the audiences minds and represent our film.

After recent trends of "challenges" where someone had to do something that was deemed had or difficult. I decided that an advert promoting a charity would be good. Due to the nature and use of post it notes I decided using them to promote a dementia charity would be good; for the challenge part it would be a short story wrote on a normal sized post it note and then sent in to the company for a prize such as free tickets to see the film or merchandise. All profits would then be donated to charity.

Research into viral adverts.

Viral advertising is utilising social media websites such as Youtube, Twitter, Facebook and Reddit. Companies have pages or accounts on these sites where they can post their advert. Viral adverts are unique as they self replicate through users passing it along to their peers on their social platform allowing the company to have to do minimal work while still reaching a large audience; there is no guarantee that an advert will go viral as the general public is very unpredictable and may not like the advert enough to share with their peers. Viral advertising can come in many forms such as video clips, images, webpages or even branded software.

A famous viral ad campaign is the "Will it blend?" series on YouTube by Blendtec, here they blend seeming tough and random everyday items in the blenders they produce. This campaign worked because they did have a good product in the blender and used audience participation to request objects to try and blend. Another aspect in why the series worked so well is that they weren't scared to blend expensive cutting edge techonology at the time such as Apples Watches and a Chromebook. 

Their YouTube channel here

Another famous viral advert is Volkswagens "The Force", featuring a small and less menacing Darth Vader who is struggling to use "The Force". The advert is montage like and the small Vader can't make anything happen with his "Force". Because Star Wars is a very established brand many people will instantly associate the music present and his costume. He then tries his powers on the family Volkswagen car where his Dad uses the remote unlock feature to make the cars headlights flash tricking the boy into thinking he did much to his delight. The advert leaves a good impression because it tells a small story and small children are very relateable and seen as cute by many. The advert also has the element of humour which will make it more memorable for people. 

Film Poster Practice

Film Poster Practice

Before I created my film poster I had a practice on photo shop. I had a quick tutorial on how to upload images onto photo shop and used the different tools to cut the images out and place them on a background. I used this image of a pig in an astronaut costume and placed it onto a space background. I created this armature film poster just to get a feel for photo shop as I had never used it before.
I used one of the tools to cut out the pig as it was originally on a different background. I then added some text for a title of the "film" and changed the colour to white as you couldnt see the black writing on the background.

Research In To Viral Adverts

Research In To Viral Adverts

A viral advert uses existing social networks to try and increase brand awearness or to achieve other marketing objectives such as advertising a new product, in our case a short film. Viral adverts have to catch the audiences attention through using emotionals to creat a viral coefficient. This will increase your viwing status as more and more people will view your advert and therefore buy/watch your new product. The idea is to inspire people to spread your message for you.

What is a viral coefficient:
This is the total number of viewers that is generated due to one existing viewer. A viral coefficient above one, means that the number of people viewing the content is growing and a number below one means that sharing growth is diminishing.
So how do you create a viral coefficient?

• Your title is the first impression the audience will get. So a creative and interesting title will attract viewers and help to increase your audience. The more people that connect with the title the better the chances of getting people to share the content.

• Use strong emotional drivers to make people care and share. It is important to create emotional excitement quickly. Get straight in there with the emotions, contrast between high levels of emotion and areas of less emotional activation to prevent boredom or overwhelming your audience.

• Use content to strike the correct emotions. One investigation showed that negative emotions were less commonly found in high viral contentthan positive emotionsthough using negative emotions is still a successfull met hod of viral advertising when it evoked anticipation and suprise. The investigation found that some specific emotions were extremely common in viral advertising, curiosity, amazement, interest, astonishment and uncertainty.

• They found that the emotion of admiration was very commonly found in popular shared content which was an unex   pected result. They believed that adverts that pull on peoples heart string would be the most poular.

Tie your brand to an emotional message. 
One investigation found that the best viral adverts had strong emotional activation, so it was decided that the best way to viral success is through emotional messages. Firstly, think carefully about how what you are advertising is related to a topic that taps in to human emotions with your target audience. The aim is to find a link to an issue that relates to your target audience, though you must make sure that the topic you choose positivley reflects the position of your brand/company. If an advert connects with the human emotions it is more likely to be shared and create a larger coefficient. This is because it plays on the heart strings persuading people to buy/watch/invest in your product.

Consider the public good.
Considering that one of the best ways to create an emotionally commplelling viral advert is to tie your content to a public good. Look at how you can create something that does a public good or creates awareness and activates emotional drivers. Engaging with the audience means creating emotional attachments and contributing to their world. Through connecting your product to a public good people are more likely to watch and react to your advert e.g. donating money to a good cause. This also puts your company into a good light as it is seen to be helping the greater good.