How to (and how not to) make a viral video which wins campaigns
At yesterday's Organisational Review meeting here in the hallowed halls, we had a presentation from our Multimedia Producer, Daniel Bird, about the making of Onslaught(er) -- the Dove parody ad that the Wall Street Journal credits with flipping Unilever into taking action on their products' role in forest destruction.
Now, when a campaign like this puts eight months of preparation into ten days of active campaigning, and the target accedes to nearly all your demands, other campaigners tend to take notice, and beat a path to your door asking for... you know, one of those viral things. And can we have it tomorrow? And can it say "Tell Minister Mullitover Not to Approve EU Directive 2567?"
Daniel put together a fabulous primer on what makes a video viral, and some of the pitfalls that Greenpeace campaigners and other activists might want to avoid in trying to create such a beast. There's plenty of excellent advice here about how you MIGHT make a video that goes viral as well as ways to guarantee you won't. Here's a sample:
Don’t rely on the viral to do the work that a longer documentary video should do, or provide the information that the campaign’s webpage should provide. If you insist that more information is included, then you are forgetting the main idea of having a viral aspect to your Greenpeace campaign: the viral’s job is to grab people’s shirt collars and haul them through the door. It is then the rest of the campaign’s job to sit them down and point at the blackboard.
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