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A friend of mine passed this video on to me this morning. Five side-splitting commercials for (now defunct) Ameriquest Mortgage, each with a similar witty punch line. What I love about these is how simple they are. Nothing fancy here, just a tight script and a few clever shots.
Of course, the irony of these spots (and their message) in light of current events is a bit, um, rich. But all things being equal, these commercials are quite amusing as stand-alone stories.
T-Mobile in the UK signed up a couple hundred of their free spirited folks and taught them a dance. Then went into the middle of the Liverpool train station and did it spontaniously, filmed it and posted it to YouTube. Gotta love when people dance together! And look! How easy would it be to make this with a couple hundred of your closest friends?
[hat tip: Ingrid]
One of our favorite video series on the web here at Poptent is Epic Fu. The Epic Fu team is fired up about all things web, video, music and art and they definitely stay on the cutting edge of what’s hot. In their latest episode, host Zadi Diaz spends the first half of the show talking about how to build a web show including gear tips and web tools. I thought this would be helpful to a lot of you Poptenters out there, so check this one out, and be sure to subscribe because they’ve got amazing stuff coming out every week.
Normally, I don’t write about other people’s video contests, but this one I couldn’t resist.
Yesterday, TechCrunch blogged about a young man who made a pretty awesome video for a McDonald’s jingle contest. He made it to the finals, and only then someone found out that he is the same guy who a dozen or so years earlier had held up a McDonald’s at gunpoint!
Well, here’s something that’s so ridiculous it couldn’t be made up. McDonald’s teamed up with MySpace to create a new jingle for the 40th anniversary of the Big Mac. The original song (two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce…) was created back in 1974. Over 1,000 user created songs and videos were submitted - the winner’s jingle becomes the official Big Mac song and will be featured in a McDonald’s Big Mac TV commercial.
Enter 29 year old Tamien Bain, who held up a McDonald’s at gunpoint when he was 14, was convicted as an adult and served 12 years in prison.
I’m not sure whether to laugh or cry, but one thing is for sure. This dude knows how to make a pretty bangin’ video! And he also just discovered a new way of making a video go viral.
This video was all the rage around the Interwebs last week. Turns out, it was a fake. It’s a commercial to promote the director, Timur Bekmambetov’s new film! Crazy, huh?
But man, it sure got me thinkin’… I bet you could to a lot of neat stuff with that ’security camera’ look. Which reminds me, this band made an entire music video with other people’s actual security cameras!
Tags: viral, video, commercial, creative inspiration
I don’t really know how I would classify this ad, but it sure is funny. And cute. And ingenious. And easy to make. I know it’s not in English, but you’ll get it.
[Thanks for the tip, I Have the Info]
Tags: creative inspiration, xlntads, video, viral, advertising, commercial
My friend Dave has this great new blog about the start-up business environment in Philadelphia called Phillypreneurs. He did a short interview with me the other day over video iChat. We talked about some cool points in there, viral vids, business, and more. Have a look!
Tags: phillypreneurs, xlntads, startup, video, interview
Today, one of the biggest and best blogs on Earth (and one of my daily reads) Read/Write Web posted a long piece on YouTube ’stars’ and how they, and others, can parlay their fame and video skills into business. It’s a pretty basic primer on the things we know, but the writer did include a long bit at the end about prosumer video makers doing the commercial thing. They didn’t mention us by name, unfortunately, but I wrote this response:
We’ve built a whole business around the idea that there is a huge (and growing) market of semi-pro and freelance video makers who are more than talented enough to tell brand stories. We’re putting their work in front of our major brand clients like Anheuser-Busch and Nestle to great praise. I definitely believe that this kind of content has great potential because people have a thirst for creation. And they’re only going to get better.
I believe in the future, you will see a creative class of videographers who make money from several revenue streams. They’ll make video ads for their neighbor’s restaurant, commercials for Nestle through sites like ours, video blog segments for their friend’s band and comedy skits for their YouTube Partner channel - making money at all of them.
It’s the rise of the multi-faceted media maker.
What are your thoughts? Can it be done? Are we heading in the right direction?
Tags: video, xlntads, commercials, business
