[by Todd] Parents with video cameras are my mortal enemy. And if you work for an advertising agency they should be yours too.
Seriously.
They’re making all of us look bad.
Here’s the deal. Yesterday my girls were running around repeating, in their best fake British accent, "Charlie bit my finger, again" and laughing hysterically. Obviously this was a lame line from some Nickelodeon show that will be invading my world for the next couple weeks, I figured. Or not.
Chloe explained to me with a very disappointed tone that the saying was from "the funniest video ever."
And indeed, she may be right. Search the phrase on Google and more than two dozen pages of links pop up, all inspired by this YouTube video.
Missing the gut-busting value of the video? Yeah, me too. But it’s been viewed 17.4 million times, copied and shown elsewhere tens of thousands more and rated by more than 39,000 viewers. Then there are the spoofs, that dreaded but inevitable measure of viral success.
All of this because some kid gets his finger bitten repeatedly by his infant brother.
What am I missing? There are tens of millions of dollars being spent by agencies and advertisers trying to figure out how to move messages in the viral channel. Books are filling the bookshelves, and newsletters cluttering inboxes, all purporting to expose the magic formula.
And yet mom and dad kick our collective butts.
Yea, yea. I know we should be heartened by magic of how the Internet gives all of us a shot at the magic, our 15MB of fame.
That would be heart warming approach. But this is advertising and people should only feel good when we pay big bucks to make a commercial then interrupt their viewing pleasure. Right?
Hmm, I wonder if that kid is available for cameos.
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