Happy 2009!

This Coca Cola TV commercial was first aired at Christmas, 1984 and it has been one of its most sucessful campaigns ever. Watch the ad, read the lyrics and then try a simple memory game: how many different people can you describe in one minute?

I’d like to buy the world a home
Furnish it with love
Grow apple trees, honey bees
And snow-white turtle-doves
I’d like to teach the world to sing
In perfect harmony
I’d like to buy the world a Coke
And keep it company
(That’s the song I sing…)

Viral videos: what are they?

Over 1 million visitors in less than a week. The latest instant hit in YouTube is, apparently, a promotional video for the movie Quarantine, to be released worldwide later this year. However, the video doesn't make any reference to the film; in fact, it looks like some ordinary shot made by someone who happened to have a camera in hand, so viewers have been wondering what the whole sequence is really all about. As it generates discussion and more questions, it is also passed on to more viewers, who in turn send it to more people. In a matter of days, it becomes a viral video.

But what is a viral video? How can they help sell an idea or a product? How is it different from other promotional materials? Watch this news story and find out.