When we wanted to take a break last week after struggling hard with yet another team task, we decided to show each other funny You Tube videos. The winner was definitely David, a 7-year-old boy that seems to be a little woozy after visiting the dentist. Seeing the video just now for the first time, I seemed to be an exception. The video ‘David after dentist’ has been viewed almost 54 million times, and it was the second most-watched video of 2009, according to You Tube – only Susan Boyle was even more woozy – Um sorry…: popular.
What particularly struck me, is the fact that David’s family apparently is earning a great amount of money from ads that appear next to the video on You Tube. As David’s father told during his presentation this week at the Southwest Interactive festival in Texas, the revenues that the family has derived through licensing the use of the video and reaping the profits of the ads, is almost enough to pay for David’s college tuition.
Besides the question if the decision of David’s father to expose his son to such an extent of media-attention, was really sensible, I think there is a valuable lesson to learn here for marketers: David has shown us that there are lots of opportunities to gain enormous online attention and to create a huge buzz, just by following his example and by making use of… viral marketing.
Posted by: Elisabeth Minnaert
Source: http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/03/18/david.after.dentist.video/index.html?iref=allsearch
