With nearly 109,650,000 views-to-date, Judson Laipply‘s Evolution of Dance is the most popular video in YouTube history.
He’s back with the official sequel, Evolution of Dance 2—this time presented by Saveology.com and powered by PeopleJam.com.
I’d never heard of PeopleJam or Saveology before today. My bet is you never have, either.
Considering most viral videos attempts fail, attaching your brand to someone like Laipply is a wise move. Instead of spending big bank creating videos that aren’t funny, authentic or effective, why not seek out the people that have caught lightning and bottle and leverage their success?
What do you think?
At the core of this is a decent idea–use sponsorship of a confirmed internet phenomenon to call attention to your brand(s). However, the execution is just awful and does nothing to connect these two companies with whatever positive association I had with the original video.
The good:
* Didn’t try to reinvent the wheel
* Tried to hitch their wagon to a brand that is quirky, well known, and universally liked
* Judson does a mean Electric Slide
The bad:
* 109 Million views and you couldn’t spring for better production values?
* No branding within the video itself. That, coupled with the fact that they are using YouTube for distribution allows viewers to remove the branding from the content.
* In no way do they link the content of the video to the products of the sponsoring brands
* Never heard of either sponsor, and still don’t know what they do.
* Why two lame sponsors instead of one?
There was another amazingly clever video that enlisted the help of Judson and did alot more to accrue benefits to the sponsor–a music video by the band Barenaked Ladies enlisted Laipply, as well as other YouTube stars.
This is how it’s done right: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FoFMRXlNJ6Y