Ball Girl's a star

The LAT's Chris Hine has all the answers to the Ball Girl video in today's paper. The video (below if you haven't seen it), is one of the new breed of realistic viral advertising videos that has seemed to find its legs in the last few months. The new class of virals tends to show a spectacular feat or bizarre happening of some sort, generally without blatantly featuring the product they endorse. In Ball Girl's case, it's Gatorade.

The buzz and speculation the videos generate -- as in this case, even though Gatorade never meant the ad to go public -- can be many times more valuable to the brand than a standard TV commercials showing an athlete chug the sugary drink. The best of these videos tend to ride the line between reality and fiction -- not so much trying to trick viewers as trying to make them wonder -- and ultimately, make them forward.  The creativity levels of these ads is getting higher fast; my guess is we're in for a wave of them, with the best ones always managing to seem just about real.

Comments

[db]

For a long time I've been skeptical of the "never meant to be seen" claims. They seem, more likely, a way to cover corporate backlash should the video generate significant negative attention, as was the case with the Ford Sport Ka "cat decapitation" video. If they were never meant to be seen, how come there are so many which continue to make their way to the 'net? As you say, they are largely successful with the target audience, so I'm thinking there's a lot of wink-winks going on.