It may be an advert for BMW (why is the car pushing in unneccessarily always a BMW?) but it does include some amazing kinetic sculpture by Theo Jansen.
The strapline from Jansen is "The walls between art and engineering exist only in our minds." He's certainly broken his walls down.
You can see more of his work in the video below, from his lecture at TED (also sponsored by BMW).
Some virals from major brands work and others don't. I think the latest from Samsung - Ant fight - demonstrates one of the functions of the phone in a tongue in cheek way.
Sadly though, some of the comments on YouTube say more about the people commenting than the brand. Did the person who wrote "FAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAKEEEEE!!!" really think it would be genuine film of ant's knocking each others' heads off?
The one mistake Samsung - or rather their agency made - is what the related links pick up. Does Samsung realy want to be linked with, and implicitly encouraging, people to video real fight videos?
Personally I don't think a mobile phone company giving one of the major mobile review websites grief is a wise idea. But on March 31st T-Mobile owner Deutsche TeleKom hand-delivered a legal letter to Engadget Mobile telling them to stop using the colour magenta.
Not only has Engadget not stopped but it's galvanised support and not only are websites and blogs voicing support - they made a stand against this unneccessary corporate heavy-handidness by making their websites magenta for the day too.
In a fit of boredom after trawling through my emails I went onto Google and typed in 'coolest thing on the web'.
ZoomQuilt was the first item returned and it is indeed pretty cool.
They must have spent some serious time on it and it's quite a stunning experience. What I particularly like is that it's essentially a simple idea executed well rather than over-applying technology and creating a mess.
This page appears to be rapidly turning into a viral blog, not intentionally I can promise you. It's just that when I come across a viral that I think is different, I just want to share it!
Well, following that article, I came across a relatively new viral to promote the new French KitKat website.
This one uses some great animation techniques and features an office boy who's having a really bad day, he has a terrible boss and is desperate to get away for a break.
I find it fascinating they ways in which some of the largest companies are using viral marketing techniques to promote their business.
In the past, both myself and David have highlighted ads that we've come across, that we've appreciated for one reason or another.
Only the other day on our footie blog, I highlighted an advert that's being used to promote the new FIFA Street 3 game. In less than half a day, over 300 visitors had viewed it (o.k. so were not one of the "A" list sites, yet!) and according to Google analytics, they'd seen the video through to the end and therefore presented with the call to action, visit the FIFA Street 3 website.
Whilst some companies create the virals themselves, others are getting their customers to do the work for them. An interesting article on Wikinomics, highlights the case of SubWay suing Quiznos over their viral tactics. Quizmos ran the "Quiznos vs. Subway TV Ad Challenge. Give it a read and have a look at the winning video, which I find quite amusing!
If Subway win their case, it could have a massive impact for all of us involved in "word of mouth" marketing on the web!