Samsung Sheep are Viral
Okay. Sure. It’s a little dated now but it still resonates and that’s a sign of an effective marketing campaign. This 200 second ad, commissioned by Samsung to promote their LED product sees woolly creatures ‘manicured’ into position to create a living billboard. All good fun.
At one point they form an image of the ‘Mona Lisa’ with the various coloured LEDs on their back. Cool.
Apparently more than a million internet users have watched the viral video in the four days since it was released online.
The creators of the video revealed that they recruited Welsh national sheep herding champion Gerry Lewis, and a team of Welsh sheep herders to guide the flocks into position. They also admitted to the use of computer trickery – which in a sense is kinda of a pity so let’s just quickly brush over that revelation.
Matt Smith, the co-founder of ad agency The Viral Factory said:
The people on camera are real farmers and they were really controlling the sheepdogs. Rather than trying to fake it all we did it for real. The sheep herding bit is straight up – no trickery but there is a fair amount of computer trickery and post production work. We thought the Mona Lisa was the big wink to people – once they saw that we thought they would realise it was not all real. But we have been quite surprised that there is still a debate about whether it is all real and people have been coming up with various theories.
Matt said the main problem on the shoot was not herding the sheep, but getting enough of them.
We filmed it at the end of last month and it is lambing season so we could not disturb the sheep that were lambing because it would have been too stressful. We used different sheep over the two day shoot because we couldn’t have them running around all day. We didn’t give them any treats because they got to wear an LED coat – I can’t think of anything better. The video is silly and joyful. This one has caused a real stir.
Here’s the ad – enjoy the cast, their flock of stars and their combined efforts… and forgive the computer trickery.. if you spot it that is. (we could tell you but then we’d have to have you with mint sauce!)
So how successful do you think their efforts were? Did it sell more Samsung product?
That we don’t know. But a quick show of hands indicated that this ad was a huge hit with the staff at FACTOR168 and the real testiment to the success of this ad was when we questioned friends and regulars at our local coffee haunt – a surprisingly large number of people remembered the ad and almost all associated it with Samsung.
This strong and positive recollection was, despite a considerable amount of time having passed since the ad went ‘viral’, pretty impressive to say the least.
