YouTube Tuesday: Weird Dude Reads Your E-Mail; Awesome Dude from Old Spice at it Again, and, Wait, is this the Lowest Budget Ad Ever?

This story is part of  Rassak’s YouTube Tuesdays series–sent to subscribers on Tuesdays–and featuring product or service videos and  mini marketing/communications/branding/messaging critiques. Subscribe:
  

1. Old Spice Man is Back … and His Muscles are in Your Hands

This another great video from Old Spice starring the man your man could smell like character (but I don’t think they call him that anymore–different actor anyway). What’s extra cool is that this video comes with an interactive feature. After you see the star playing drums (with his muscles!) you can control his muscles with your keyboard to compose your own piece. Then you can save it and share it. If you do, leave a link to your muscular musical masterpiece in the comments on this blog. I’m not sure the interactive part will work here… you might need to click over the Vimeo for this video’s full awesomeness.

2. Dr. Numb. Horrible Super Low Budget Video. Smart Strategy. (Warning, NSFW)

I’m not a fan of this video exactly. But I like the three-part strategy — 1) Spend basically zero money on your video 2) Combine two surefire YouTube audience-building techniques a) show somebody in pain and b) use the word nipple in your title and 3) stick a dead-simple link to your website very high up in the video description so it’s easy to click on. Voila .. and 25,000,000 views later. No actual nipples shown, but the “monologue” is best experienced with headphones in your work environment.

3. GMail Man “Reads” Your E-Mail

Last week I featured a funny Microsoft video that was a hit piece on Google. Here’s another one. In this one, Microsoft hits hard at Google’s Gmail product. (the free ad-supported version). They do a good job getting people to think “ewwww, are they really reading my mail??!–that’s creepy, scary and wrong.”

I don’t know how many people this video will turn from Gmail . And, to be clear, it’s not as if somebody is actually over at Google reading your email — but it is a reasonably solid piece of persuasive communications. At least for people who get freaked out by privacy concerns on the web.

Some companies (and more than some politicians) like negative ads like this becasue there’s research that shows that negative messages are more memorable than positive ones. But ads like this can also backfire (in the biz they call it “boomeranging”). And there’s some evidence that this one IS boomeranging. See the first comment over at YouTube.