This week I noticed the ‘Fake Tour de France‘ video that has gone viral and at this moment has almost 600,000 views on youtube. Backtweet shows 260 results of people sharing the link on twitter. This video is a perfect example of how to do a viral video campaign.

Although Evian’s roller babies video campaign is one of the most successful ones worldwide (total of 22 million views), this is not something most brands can replicate. The exceptional content of the Evian video caused people to still share the video, although it clearly was an advertisement. The strategy behind the Tour de France video is much more interesting, because it isn’t clear weather it’s an advertisement. Thus the barrier to stay away form it’s commercial message or to share it on a website is much lower.

There are three categories from which a viral campaign can choose to potentially become successful: ‘Fun’, ‘hot’ or ‘cool’. If your viral video falls into one of these categories its more likely that it will be shared. Funny videos are often shared, hot (sexy) video can call for attention and with cool videos people take time to watch them.

Brands shouldn’t think it’s sufficient to have a youtube account with their campaign video’s  and then ask media agencies: ‘I want my video to go viral’. The media for viral campaigns needs to be specifically made with this purpose, els it can’t be used for viral campaigns. ‘Cool’ commercials could end up with a few thousand views on youtube, because people like to look them up, but this can hardly be called a good viral.

Now the question is if most people did understand it was a viral for (or sponserd by) Bwin.com. The acutal Bwin logo just appears very shortly at the end of the video. While this subtilty is positive to lower the barriers of sharing it, the brand could have gotten a bit more exposure.

*update: A dutch version of this blogpost ‘Beste aanpak voor Viral video campagnes’ was posted on human media and on dutchcowboys (currently over 6000 views). It also got featured in Dan Calladine’s newsletter.

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1. Launch of YouTube’s Insights for Audience