Tuesday, June 7, 2011

The Power of #SM - Using the Dark Side for Goodliness!

    A friend just sent me a video clip along with this tease: You will NEVER guess what this ad is about. That's a pretty good tease. And if you haven't seen this commercial I'll bet you Sara Palin's gun collection that you will not come close to guessing what company is linked to this ad. Take a look!   
  
     Details about the ad are a bit sketchy. According to information on the internet this devilishly clever commercial aired in Germany- possibly some time ago. I got curious and googled "dirt devil exorcist commercial". The first hit is a link to the Dirt Devil web site. So right there, the vacuum maker is getting bonus points from this video. And there are links to the ad on YouTube, Viad-TV,  Ad Week, Vimeo.com so forth and so on. The ad has gone semi-viral with more than 668,000 hits on YouTube. (I think you need at least 1 million hits to lay claim to "Going Viral".)

     A lot of corporations are working on ridiculously clever videos- in hopes of creating an avalanche of attention via the internet and social media. Remember Jennifer Aniston's sex tape? For the record, I just googled "Jennifer Aniston" and her sex tape for the smartwater company is the 9th hit. The smartwater video now has 9,429,408 hits. That is incredible exposure for smartwater. And that kind of free exposure is what everybody wants.

     But that may NOT be the case over at the Dirt Devil company. I can't find the vacuum-maker on Facebook- although there is a page called the "Dirt Devils, Fans of Dirt Devil Vacuum Cleaners". That page has two fans. However, there is a "Dirt Devil Vacuum" page on YouTube. But there are only seven bland commercials posted there- no sign of the exorcist commercial. The YouTube page lists 39 followers- and no activity for the past year. I fired off an e-mail to Dirt Devil's media relations department which was never answered. So I called- and got voice mail. Then I called corporate headquarters and hit voice mail again.

     So here's the take away: I sat down to write a piece about the geniuses at Dirt Devil. But it looks like Dirt Devil isn't "picking up" the importance of social media. If that video is just a parody- which it may well be- Dirt Devil should buy it and put it on the air-along with links to Facebook, Twitter & YouTube. 

     Maybe I should end this post by saying I got the dirt on a big vacuum company? Sorry, the Devil made me do it...

Update: I first wrote to Dirt Devil's Media Relations department on June 1st. On June 17th I received the following reply- and it clears up some questions.

"Hello,

We appreciate your interest in Dirt Devil. The "exorcist" advertisement was created by a student in Germany independent of Dirt Devil.  We have no plans to endorse this advertisement or use it to promote products in the United States. If you have any further questions or concerns you can contact our Marketing Team... Thank you."


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