I came across this video on my Podcasts and I have to be honest – I loved it. I just couldn’t understand why. As you know, viral takes many forms on the online world, but two specific forms have been growing in a substantial rate – the “experience”-driven viral video and the contraption viral video.
How can we define each? For starts, the “experience”-driven viral video are videos such as the one I posted first. Like this we have the picture-a-day videos, for example, who’ve had quite some air time on Youtube. They range from face pictures to show the evolution of man in age, pictures of pregnancy to show the baby’s growth or pictures of the weight loss attained in a determined number of days. The main focus of these videos is simple – shortening time (and distances, in some cases). By displaying the changes / experiences / experiments of certain user, always accompanied by a really emotional song, spawning a considered time span, virality on these types of videos is attained by displaying a concept so difficult to percept on a daily-basis – how time affects us all.

Contraption viral videos are quite reminiscent on the Looney Tunes Coyote Acme contraptions. The father of this type of contraptions is Rube Goldberg, a North-American cartoonist with a big talent for creating systems that do really simple tasks in really complicated ways. These contraptions are usually comprised by a never ending complex system, made with common or uncommon items that via a small impulse are all activated in a methodical and studied path. They usually serve such purposes as switching on a light or creaming an egg (Cadbury’s free advertising anyone?). What is the interest with these types of videos? Well, not only are the systems a display of skill from the users who create them, as they are a display of applying complexity to mundane tasks that everyone take for granted. And they’re funny to watch!
So marketeers, how does this relate to you? Simple – you want to do viral videos? Then think on two concepts – time and chindogu. Always consider time as a corner stone of your campaigns – how to apply the fear of aging to your brand and how to turn it emotional. And the chindogu principal is always a good method to not only exercise your creativity, but also a method into finding the solutions towards problems that your consumer might have.