More and more companies start to demonstrate themselves with viral videos, then how do those astounding creations come out? And how are those videos forwarded from friends made?

 

Viral marketing has already become a new stage for the advertising marketing circle to show off their unrestrained creations. This trend started in 1997, venture capitalist Steve Jurvetson came up with the concept of “viral marketing” for the first time when describing Hotmail, as Hotmail had absorbed 12 million registered users in one and a half years after it was established, with marketing spending less than 3 percent of that of its direct rivals, thus becoming a frontrunner in the market. 

 

The father of viral video advertising has been proved to be Ed Robinson, an advertisement producer. In 2001, he spent $10,000 to shoot an episode of funny and astonishing video – A grown-up man is filling the air into a rubber boat with his mouth, and his head has been broken into pieces when a child rushed to sit on the boat. Robinson attached his company website at the end of the video clip, and sent to five friends by e-mail, then waiting for good news. Just over that weekend, more than 60,000 people watched the 12-second advertising short, and his website received 500,000 pageviews in less than 3 months. 

 

Nowadays, viral video advertising is increasing in China, but sometimes you just cannot feel it. Big companies caring about young consumers are most interested in viral marketing. Generally, these companies always have a strong brand, belong to technology product or consumer product industry, and are familiar with creation and popularity tactics. They have their own experience and understandings on the secret of “viruses”. 

 

The core advantage of video websites is that they own powerful portal resources, and this is an indispensible advantage for them. Once these websites get orders, they will outsource creation and content making links. A video clip may cost several hundred thousands, but actually making content only costs around RMB 10,000. 

 

At that time, Magilm Pictures’ customers were those video websites who just found the viral video advertising, when most of their orders came from Youku, and companies like Magilm Pictures made profits from price differences. For example, a customer gives RMB 200,000 of launch fees to some video website, who, most of the time, is only willing to spend $10,000 on outsourcing of content making. Deducting shooting costs, Magilm left few with them.  

 

With tight fund for shooting, Magilm can only make some topic-focused videos, and it’s impossible for them to shoot as astounding videos as foreign companies. This problem has always troubled Umbrella Long. In order to solve this problem, he should pass over video websites to directly contact with big clients, but his company is too small to afford these resources. This time, a customer gave over RMB 100,000 producing fees, and Long plans to invest all in shooting. 

 

China’s first works on viral video advertising only spent 20-25 percent of budgetary charges. 

This advertisement was shot in 2007, when viral videos were only in starting stage in China. When the script was available, Eight Partnership Limited invited experienced adverting director Wu Ershan, who had the interest in as well as the capability of shooting, and gave suggestions on the execution. According to the script, the ad must be shot in the countryside, but considering costs, Eight Partnership Limited chose the site in a small village bordering Hebei province and Inner Mongolia. It was very difficult to control performance of local villagers, thus the leading role was an actor aged at his 30s, who had been chosen from a performing arts institute and disguised as a local villager, but onlookers in the film were real villagers. The advertisement took 2 days and was shot from 11 a.m. to 3-4 p.m. each day, for it needed high-rise sun. Before shooting, Eight Partnership Limited prepared a matting clip, in which it imitated a foreign TV station’s reporting news, saying that Hip-Hop was originated from Inner Mongolia of China.