I’m not allergic to this Kittens viral movement.

Alex recently sent around a video of a girl ‘reading’ a book with pictures of kittens in it.  The video is called “Kittens: Inspired by Kittens”.  We had a good chuckle over it, reciting lines from it, even showing it to our friends and SOs over the weekend after Taste of Soulard.  This week, Alex stumbled upon a post about it on Fallon’s Blog.  In it, it claims that the little girl in the video is actually the daughter of a Fallon ECD, Al Kelly.

The post goes on to give a list of lessons, seen below, as to what we can learn from this viral video homerun, which now has just over 1,915,500 views.

I do think we may learn 7 applicable lessons from “Kittens…” to add into our “viral video” toolbox for surefire success:
1) Embrace Silly – stupid is ok, too! (serendipity)
2) Getit?Gotit?Good. – make it a fast, easy “get”: a girl reading a childrens book about kittens – got it. (science)
3) Embrace ‘Good Enough’ – shoot it fast and cheap, poor production value is good enough as long as they see it and hear it. (science)
4) Tap an emotional core that people want to share in spreading – people are immediately on this girl’s side, we want to help her succeed at this book report. (serendipity)
5) Add Cute Kid – like Billy Dee Williams always said: “Works every time!”(science)
6) Add Cute Kittens (science)
7) Try, Try Again – rinse and repeat the above – the old broadcast method dictated we shoot one big production a year. The YouTube method says shoot more micro ideas and release them freely to the wild. (serendipity)

When Crystal and I came back from the Account Planning Conference in beautiful Miami last summer, we gave a presentation of our learnings to the agency.  We chatted a lot on the topic of viral videos – showing everything from “I’m fucking Matt Damon” to “Where the hell is Matt?”.  We talked about how viral videos can be educational in the projects we are working on – How do people share these?  Why do they make spoofs based on them?  Why are people so interested in these videos?

One of our Art Directors mentioned using viral videos in our briefings.  We thought that was an excellent idea – both because it’s trendy as a medium and because it’s engaging as hell during a briefing.  Showing a video that supports your brief is a way to bring your story to life – to give it some zing.  I’m not sure if we’ve been drinking our Koolaid since that brilliant idea, but Fallon’s post brings me back to it.  The benefits of viral we told the agency about in July haven’t changed, according to Fallon’s above outline – it’s cheap.  It’s silly.  It’s simple.  It’s actionable.  It’s emotional. It may not always have kittens – which I am highly allergic to – but dammit, it’s got sharing power.

Therefore, my dear RT Strategists, let’s share more videos.  And not even just in briefings.  Share in our huddles.  Share in meetings.  Share with your family and friends.  Viral videos have become a form of joke-telling and storytelling, as the videos you share – or create – support the traditional story you’re trying to weave.  And who doesn’t like looking savvy and groovy telling a traditional story in a non-traditional way? I don’t know about you, but I sure do like looking cool in front of other people.  (Doesn’t happen often enough, though.)

To reward you for sitting through this failure of a post, here is the video.