A New Hero Is Born. You!

Check out the trailer below, notice anyone familiar?

Pretty cool, huh? This viral campaign was created by the Swedish broadcasting company Radiotjanst to bring peoples attention to broadcast fees and thank them for paying it.

It’s a nice touch and one of the most professional viral video’s I have ever seen. It’s this attention to detail that made this campaign one of the most successful viral advertising campaigns ever. Achieving 14 million unique hits within 8 weeks is nothing short of amazing, so how did they do it?

Advertising company DraftFCB thinks the answer is simple. Mislead you into taking an interest and then create the hook to keep you interested. In order to do this, they created a movie advertising campaign, similar to the Mercedes “film” Lucky Star (the video for which can be watched below), that looks and feels like the real thing but is so vague that you you need to find out more.

They created theatrical posters and cinema trailers for “The hero” and even went as far as to get some of Sweden’s biggest film critics to review the film. Of course when people got to the site, everything became clear. The second stage then used word of mouth allowing people to create their own movie by inserting a picture that shows at key moments in the trailer, portraying the subject as the hero. Once the movie is made it then allows the user to share with friends through e-mail and social networking sites, Twitter and Facebook.

It’s no wonder it became popular. Who could resist the opportunity to see their face in a movie, on a newspapers front page, projected on a jumbo-tron, or floating around space? Then send it your friends under the guise of something else. A simple but genius idea.

I’d like to see more of this kind of advertising as interactive campaigns that can be shared with friends are always a winner. Movie studio’s, it’s over to you!

What do you think of this campaign? have you found anything similar? Leave your comments below.