Write The Future: A new standard in viral

One thing that clients often ask for is "Can you do something viral for us?". That Chicken started it. It's a reasonable challenge for a client to set. It's hard to imagine anything with a better ROI than a brilliant viral campaign.

Nike's Write The Future is setting a new bar in viral. If you haven't seen it, you can see it here. As a soccer, ..er football fan (I am a Brit after all), I can watch this a million times and probably will over the next 2 months. It's simply an amazing bit of film.

As a marketer, I am in awe of the way this thing has gone viral. It launched last week and was the Top Viral Video by end of the week with over 2 million views. Over the weekend, it was aired in ITS FULL LENGTH during the Champions League Finals several times and judging by the global nature of the chatter about it during the match, it looks like this was aired in multiple countries simultaneously.

After showing it on the Champions League Final, the viewership and buzz went crazy. As of now, it's at 8.5 million views on Youtube and the chatter is intense on Twitter and Facebook. You only need to do a Twitter Search on #writethefuture to see the buzz this is creating.

The thing that's so smart about this campaign is the combination of breathtaking content placed at the center of a well-structured social media ecosystem using Youtube, Facebook and Twitter to support the buzz. All of this fueled by high-profile media placements. Not a low-cost solution but the return on investment could be staggering when it's over.

Personally I will be watching his campaign as intently as the Word Cup itself.

Adam Turinas