Week 1 Top Viral Brand Videos – How To Catch An Alligator and Santa Visits Singapore

The holiday season is almost over and people are stumbling back to normal life. This New Year week also seems to be a hectic one considering that the average time length of the five most viral videos was just 48 seconds. People just don’t have the time like in the good old days.

Unlike the previous two weeks, where popular videos revolved around the themes of Christmas and New Year, this week had videos ranging from animal life to hair care ads to the last remnants of the festive spirit videos on the viral videos list.

#1/ Animal Planet, Biggest Gator Ever

My hunter-gatherer manliness stops at being able to extract medium sized spiders from the bathroom, exterminating the odd cockroach and humanely shooing house lizards out of my apartment. The Gator Boys laugh at my feebleness. They shoo alligators the size of an SUV out of back yards for a living. Incase you are not aware, these two specimens of masculinity (Jimmy and Paul) have a TV show called Gator Boys on Animal Planet. This season they are in Mississippi, trying to rescue alligators using little more than guile, courage and sticky black tape. Kind of like my glass and paper method for extracting spiders.

With Season 2 to start from January 6th, this video has generated a lot of interest among the viewers, especially since the caption reads ‘biggest alligator ever’. At the time of writing, this video has had over 918,00 views, 55 comments and 132 likes since it was uploaded on December 18, 2012.

The huge popularity of the video is also an indication of the popularity and success of the previous season and of the Gator Boys themselves. The Facebook Page of Gator Boys has 10,163 people talking about them and 45,487 fans. The video has been actively promoted through their other social media channels.

#2/ L’Oreal Paris UK, Elvive Nutri-gloss Crystal Sparkling Shampoo and Conditioner

Personally, these kinds of adverts confuse me. Do women really buy this stuff? As with most men, you will find a bottle of Head & Shoulders shampoo and some random supermarket brand shower gel in my bathroom. No crushed apricot facial scrubs, no cucumber and sage shampoo infused with passion fruit and 43 other vitamins and no assortment of scrubs and sponges here. Anyway, L’Oreal Paris’s TV ad about Elvive Nutri-gloss Crystal Sparkling Shampoo and Conditioner was the second most viral ad for the last week. Uploaded on December 18th, it has been viewed by 49,000 women who, presumably, want to know how they can face the world when they have a bad hair day.

(Here comes the science…). L’Oreal advertises its first micro-crystal shampoo and appeals to women by effectively saying you look terrible when you have a bad hair day and you should hide your hair away in horror. As a solution to this problem, the ad goes on to show its new innovative product and the benefits it can give – awesome shiny smooth hair. The video captures this change by using black and white videography during the beginning of the ad where the women all have a big shy before being transformed by the wonder shampoo, and then are shown in full candescent color with luscious, beautiful hair.

#3/ Samsung Mobile UK, Samsung Galaxy S III Mini

Are you an Apple or Android fanboi? In the Unmetric office, I’m surrounded by people that are ‘cool’ because they think it’s cool to own every Apple product available. They were even ready to fork out for the iBall until they realized it was a parody of people like them. Personally, I love the Samsung ads mocking the Apple sheeple standing in line waiting for the latest overpriced Apple gadget. (Ah, I also love being the blog editor! The power is unlimited). This new ad from Samsung Mobile UK was published on YouTube on December 21st, 2012 and has received 29,000 views, 5 comments and 12 likes.

The short video isn’t particularly clever like the Apple parody ads, but given the popularity of the Samsung Galaxy S III, there’s probably plenty of people who are interested in the Mini which has all the same features but doesn’t feel like you are carrying a small book around with you.

#4/ Finnair, A Finnair Christmas in Singapore at Changi Airport

In the last few years, some airlines seem to have realized that their air stewards and stewardesses can be leveraged for their marketing efforts. We’ve seen dancing stewardesses from Cebu and Finnair and hobbits and dwarves from Air New Zealand. This viral video from Finnair isn’t quite as grand as their previous attempts, but brought a smile to many faces at Singapore airport. Posted on December 26th, the video has an incredible 382,537 views, 57 likes and 12 comments at the time of writing.

Adding an element of surprise and happiness to the festive season of Christmas, Finnair had gifts for its passengers as they waited to for baggage claim. These gifts were given away by Santa and other Christmas outfit-clad volunteers, who all had got dressed in their respective costumes next to baggage claim. Airlines are in a cut throat industry and often the only thing that can distinguish between them is service. By doing things like this that make customers go ‘wow’, they are able to get plenty of airtime and media visibility as people share this customer wow experience. If they do a really good job, they might even end up on the Unmetric blog as part of our weekly viral series, now there’s a goal for every airline.

#5/ Rolex, New Year’s Concert 2013 with Paul Halwax

Who doesn’t like a bit of grandeur and pomp now and then? Rolex, associating itself with the finer things in life presents a short video series on the New Year’s concert that was performed in Vienna this year. A behind the scenes look and interviews with members of the orchestra helped lift the lid on the passionate people that perform for the entertainment of others. The video was actually uploaded on the 5th December, but it started going viral on the 31st as many people were searching for New Year videos. To date it has over 9,500 views and rather sensibly, given how much Rolex cares about its brand, comments have been turned off.

The video shows the concert through the eyes of Paul Halwax, bass tuba player for the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra. He describes the music as one that comes from the heart and loved by everybody. The whole event with the flowers and lighting is so enchanting that even if not able to be present there physically, one would not want to miss a telecast or video of it. Uploaded on December 5th, 2012 it has had 8765 views and 33 likes.

That rounds up this week’s look at the top viral brand videos. I’m now off to prove my masculinity after my girlfriend saw that Gator Boys video, by hammering some nails in to the wall, doing parallel parking (even when there is an easier parking space), opening a beer bottle with my teeth and other such manly things.

Methodology

Unmetric monitors the YouTube channels of thousands of the biggest brands in the world and triggers immediate alerts whenever a brand video starts to go viral. The videos in this blog post were deemed to be the most viral based on view growth and expected view growth for a channel. Gain access to all this data by claiming a 10 day free trial.