A friend who works at Sophos sent me this 2 minute?video, of Sophos WebAlert explained with children’s toys:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQSbJJCQrHg

How do you pitch a product that’s buried on a web server and noticed only when it fails? By creating a campaign that’s different+good – being different gets you attention, being good sells your product.

IMO this campaign largely fails by being only kinda different and kinda good – apart from taking 2 minutes to say 1 minutes’ worth of info, it adds nothing but Sophos knowledge to the viewer. That’s what we call an advertisement – just another interruption. Instead, Sophos needed to understand their audience to create something they want to see, and then fully commit to delivering it.

Here’s two videos that demonstrate this well. Firstly, here’s a Virgin America safety video that 200,000 people have voluntarily watched on YouTube, when they’re nowhere near a plane. Its designers clearly understand travelers, creating appropriate humor to capture their interest:

Secondly, here’s a video demonstrating the benefits of committing fully to pretty much anything, with almost 8 million views to date:

Or, as Jessica Hagy puts it:

Having said all that, being kinda different + kinda good is better than not being different or good at all – I am, after all, one person bothering to blog about Sophos’ video. So take risks, try, fail & learn – in world full of noise, the biggest risk of all is to play it safe.