So so, Levi's does it again. A viral worth watching, totally fitting their brand ("a pants so strong you can slide all surfaces with it. let's prove that and make a wicked contest out of it ... yeah dude!") and so totally "YOUTH"! Hat off for ... I guess Cutwater again?
If you dig this video, powerslide your way down to the Santa Monica Pier where Levi's will be hosting the 3rd Annual Powersliding Competition on April 15th. I expect you ALL to be there, even if you've never touched a rail. There's gonna be some intense sliding, live music and other fun stuff.
Where: Santa Monica Pier When: Wednesday April 15th, 3-5pm Music: Matt and Kim
The NYC guys and PDX should be there, along with other legends like myself. Expect to see some crazy stuff.
So neat! So shareable! So worth the million views the three-day-old clip already earned! But I could tell instantly (and I have no idea why no one else did) that this was a stealth ad — because it's a direct copy of a stealth ad that got over 3 million views last year.
Virals are launched to market a product without actually naming it, by appealing to the public's love of Internet stunt videos.
While Ray-Ban's ad was launched anonymously, the creative team behind it soon came forward. Josh Warner, president of The Feed Company, explained how he promoted this viral video to Adweek. The team posted more videos, now more obviously advertising Ray-Ban though still without using a traditional ad format, to the YouTube account that hosted the original viral ad.
Blogs like Laughing Squid and Neatorama posted the video with no guess about the creators (though political blog Hot Air guessed this might be a Levi's ad). Even G4TV's Attack Of The Show discussed the ad, crediting it to an unnamed group of gymnasts and making no mention of Levi's.
Note the line at 0:36 of the Levi's ad: "At least there's no zipper." That's what clinched it for me: Levi's is the only jeans brand to actively advertise its zipperless buttoned jeans. The user name "unbuttonedfilms" corroborates this.
It was created by Cutwater, the newly launched Omnicom darlings, with feeding and marketing by Josh Warner’s FeedCompany
