The power of viral campaigns in this day and age is hugely under-rated, and massively neglected. We’re busy discussing new campaigns with a few of our clients, and have included viral elements in each, which is kinda why I was inspired to write this blog…

On Friday afternoon we stumbled across this little nugget of a video clip, which was created and posted by TomTom, the GPS manufacturers. To be honest, TomTom barely registered in my conscious as a GPS manufacturer. You say GPS, I automatically think Garmin. But not after seeing this Youtube clip. Sure I’m a Star Wars fan (not to the level that Dorin is, but bare with me) so I may be slightly biased, but I enjoy creatives that play on the Star Wars theme, especially those taking Star Wars characters (Vader in particular) and transposing them into everyday life. And thanks to this video, TomTom is bleeping loudly on my radar as a GPS brand.

The clip is short, entertaining and funny, and most importantly it clearly conveys the message that TomTom is trying to communicate – TomTom’s new GPSs now come with your favourite Star Wars characters voices. That’s pretty cool, and will certainly appeal to most techno-freaks and gadget-heads, the majority of who are Star Wars freaks.

But more important than anything is the numbers, which are certainly not to be sternutated at. The video was posted on YouTube five days ago. When we stumbled upon it three days later, it had already amassed over 250,000 views. Two days later, that figure is sitting at 755,232, and climbing by the second. That’s half a million people receiving the TomTom brand message in less than two days! And I am sure that the figure will grow exponentially over the next few days, weeks and even months. Even more amazingly, this video probably cost only a few thousand Dollars to produce, and was posted on YouTube for free! That’s the power of viral.

As I said at the start of this post, we’ve got some great viral ideas for the brands we’re pitching, but don’t want to give to much away right now. But hold thumbs they’ll see the value of viral, and watch this space…

So 2009 is long gone and good riddance!

At Gorilla we’ve embraced the New Year with an attitude of optimism and excitement. We have some fantastic projects lined up, and have literally hit the ground running. Certain members of the Gorilla team have thrown themselves into their work and are committed to making 2010 an incredibly prosperous and successful year.

Sadly certain members of the team don’t seem to be as motivated, and without pointing any fingers, probably need to reevaluate their work ethic…

We're a little worried about altitude sickness in our new offices...

It seems 2009 has been a tough year all round, and everyone seems to be feeling the pinch. Retrenchments, foreclosures, cutbacks and bankruptcies seemed to be everywhere, but the good news is that 2010 is looking up…

Aside from 2010 being an even numbered year (don’t we all hate odd years?!) there’s a lot of positive happenings and things are seriously looking up. And this isn’t just true for the world and specifically South Africa, everyone’s favourite primates have also got some exciting prospects on the horizon. Aside from a very exciting new media channel that we’ve patented and are in the process of launching to the world, we also have some very cool projects rolling out for some pretty big brands. Yup, we build brand love, and right now it seems a lot brands are loving us…

In fact things are looking so good we’re even looking at new premises. Apparently there’s a bit of a demand for them, but we simply doubled the nearest offer and scooped them. Sweet. Dorin’s the most stoked out of all of us and is planning to BASE jump down to his car every evening. We decided not to tell our company insurers that.

Gonzo

Ok now before the cocky comments start flying, that’s a rhetorical question… I mean other than Dorin’s new haircut, we’re clearly all virile, young primates that are still a few decades off needing the little blue sergeant major to help us stand to attention. So when I logged on to our blog this morning to find we had 8151 new comments, my first reaction was one of happiness, but my second was one of suspicion…

Fortunately my instincts are as sharp as ever, as I took the time to navigate to investigate and discovered that we’d been spammed stukkend! A quick perusal through the first few hundred comments revealed a common thread – VIAGRA! Yup, like that scene in Forrest Gump when Bubba starts listing the different ways you can eat shrimp, these comments seemed to carry every possible use of the word Viagra known to man – Viagra brand, Viagra Thaliand, Viagra India, Viagra pills, Viagra party (this one caught my eye), Viagra salad (I shite thee not…), discount Viagra, Viagra heart attack, Viagra PDF etc. There were even postings in other languages…

So if you’re going to comment on his post please don’t mention Viagra… I’m set to auto-nuke at this stage and have the reactions of a panther. A very fast panther. On speed. And Viagra.

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