When Cutwater came to Feed Company with the Never Hide Films project, the branding, or lack of branding, was already decided. The films featured people wearing Ray-Ban sunglasses doing strange and wonderful things. Bikini Body Builder vs.Rubik’s Cube featured a female body-builder in a bikini fiddling with a Rubik’s cube while a calypso band played in the background. Guy catches glasses with face had two friends throwing Wayfarer sunglasses at each other from a bridge, elevator, skateboard, and moving car.
The only branding is a fleeting reference to Ray-Ban’s campaign theme “Never Hide” in the dusted out window of a car and a hastily held sign with the words Never Hide penned on it. If the branding’s that subtle what’s the point? an advertiser might ask. Well the point is, social video networks like YouTube, Heavy, Break and the hundred others aren’t TV networks. People choose to watch video content away from the constant barrage of network TV ads. So if you run the same commercials you run on TV in these networks 9 times out of 10 (maybe 10 out of 10) users will also run away.
But if you’re subtle - another word for creative - and you’re content is good, people will watch your content and talk about it. Which is the whole idea. People, especially online - are smart about marketing, they know they’re being sold but don’t mind because you’re being cool about it. Threaded through over 11,359 comments for Catch on YouTube you hear -
Nice video! Congrats Ray ban…
For all the happy few who did not know yet, this is a viral ad for Ray Ban glasses. Just Google “Never Hide”
did anyone else notice they had ” neverhide ” written on the dirt on the car? :
So strike a subtle tone when you want a conversation to happen around your brand in social video environments, Your voice will carry.
