Was a crossover panel with SXSW film.  Fantastic.  Best so far.  (description)

What is a viral video?

Different answers…

Is kind of a sliding scale. Most popular video on youtube has been seen over 100 mil times.

Where a significant amount of the viewership wants to help with the distribution.

Anything with boobs or kittens. (shows video)

Taps into something essentially human, something people can feel compulsive about sharing.

Two big buckets: Viral by accident. Happen to capture something extraordinary or cute or something. Flash in the pan. But can also create them intentionally.

TED guy – Goal of TED – Spread ideas. Started in 1984 (was video taping them, but not very well). Having a taped accademic lecture online… seemed rediculous. First successful one was malcome gladwell (40,000 views). That was their initial bench mark. Factors that helped:

High video production values – shooting from multiple angles, high definition, tight close ups (for youtube size), start talks with a bang (where it actually begins).

OK Go guy – Know your audience – sometimes they don’t expect you to have high production values, then it would do more harm than good. Backyard dance video – is homemade, feels homemade, was actually a rehersal, crappyness was part of it’s charm. (10 mil views) We’re not very good dancers anyway so it would be borring to watch us on stage. But content does need to be good. You can’t make shitty content spread. Ex. We think of crazy ideas and try to do them. Creates a sense of wonder.

Some back and forth among the panelists about content

Some of the most popular content producers have middle/low production values. Immediacy, accessibility – “I’m like you”.

Inspiration, surprise, sense of wonder, cleverness, positivity. Rarely see content that’s negative or depressing. [NYT research about forwarded stories]

Exception – Funny failures, and testicle kicking.

Tips for making it go viral

  • Build audience – subscriber base, gives it a boost at launch.
  • Encourage embedding
  • Good metadata (title, description)
  • Distribute on multiple fronts
  • Cultivate super seeders
  • Limited exclusivity (want to be careful with this, don’t contradict embed principle)

Community has a very permiable wall. Getting people to help with creativity (shoot offs, parodies) is extremely important to virality

Fail blog doesn’t create content, it curates it. Find great stuff, make it easier for people to find it.

There’s no one way to do it. TED tries to get videos out in as many ways as possible. There is no longer one route to the audiences.

OK Go – Dumped their record label because they wouldn’t allow embedding. It’s a no brainier, in first days, almost all the views are off site (1st three days 95% of the Rube Goldberg video’s views were not on you tube)

You tube woman – It’s common with viral videos for 50% of views in 1st 48 hours to be off YouTube (embedded). Then people hear about it and search for it on YouTube. Metadata (good titles, etc) are key for helping people find them.

TED guy – Can use different titles depending where posting (blogs, youtube, etc) to reach different audiences. Distribute with blogs, Virgin America channel, etc. Embedding is huge.

TED guy – People post comments that are very emotional, and personal. You can’t write that kind of stuff as a PR person.

OK Go guy – State Farm paid for the whole video. Record company didn’t have the money so we found outside sponsorship. In return, added a thank you slide at the end. They were very hands off (unlike a record label, which has content expertise, thinks they are the artist). At first State Farm wanted exclusivity. That was a non-starter for us. Exclusivity doesn’t work online. The point of something spreading is that it’s supposed to f*cking spread. People just aren’t that cattle-ish. We partnered with 5 different blogs. Each got exclusive photos and bloopers videos a few days in advance.

Our message to State Farm was:  Our fans aren’t stupid, the world isn’t stupid. We’ll make you part of the story by thanking you at end and in the metadata. We also had state farm on the truck that started off the video.

(Actually a lot of people in audience hadn’t seen the This Too Shall Pass video.)

This video took 6 months to make, 18 engineers to build, 60 engineers for shoot days, working 24 hours per day at end. They were in it for the love. People watch it between four and five times, hard to get it all in one go.

Hundreds of takes. 65 takes got past the tire. Three finished, combined footage from these for the video (didn’t get every thing on film in one shoot). No CGI, it’s all authentic.

People said a lot of positive about Sate Farm in the comments. Is like 17th century sponsorship.

Take away:  Do something incredible, something that seems almost impossible.

Surprise people

Showed this video because it has reveal after reveal after reveal…

Much less successful than Surprised Kitty (but oddly big in Korea)…

Surprised SXSW contest

After watching these videos we got our own surprise. The panel announced that the “Surprised SXSW” contest.

First we made our own video…

The contest – make your own SXSW surprise video, Tweet about it with #surprisesxsw Gift bags for the 20 best vids.