December 10, 2007

Chocolate Rain: How ad agencies love YouTube

It all started with a guy named Tay Zonday who created a YouTube video of him singing a song he wrote called Chocolate Rain. It caught on, went incredibly viral, and has received 12 million views so far.

Meanwhile, Dr. Pepper was launching a new flavor called Cherry Chocolate. It hired an ad agency to connect the two events, and this video was born. Tay was given a fancy robe and throne, some dancing girls and back-up rappers, and he re-sang his song, this time talking about Cherry Chocolate Rain.

Dr. Pepper could have gone a different way with this remake and blatantly plugged the new soft drink throughout the video. Instead, they focused on making it entertaining to ensure it would be watched and forwarded and gave the soft drink a very minor role.

Ad agencies should take note of this campaign.The video is clearly a success with 1.2 million views on YouTube during its first 8 days.    - -Ken

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Comments

In all honesty, the video the song is okay. It hasn't moved away from its root, and has still managed to retain the appeal that made Taye's original "Chocolate Rain" a viral success. Kudos to Dr.Pepper for understanding this.

"Ohio's agriculture's based on grains". Genius. Man, isn't it great when an agency gets paid to execute "something viral"... and actually does it well?

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