Monday, September 26, 2011

Did you see the Carlsberg anti-biker "viral" video yet?


It's already been posted several places, but seeing as this is the slowest day ever on copyranter, I thought I'd try to get some feedback about it from you, the smart reader. Me, I think it's an interesting "new media" stunt. Now, what Carlsberg will reap from this stunt besides a couple million YouTube page views, I have no idea. But I'm sure Belgian agency Duval Guillaume could provide me with a detailed white paper of that, right guys? See many more video ad stunts here.

14 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

the woman's expression, at 1:24, after tasting the beer - priceless!

I-)

2:09 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

make that 1:25 or 1:26 (da@n sliders!) - the older woman, who sort of smacks her lips...

I-)

2:12 PM  
Blogger Miguel Pous said...

Well, I find a few interesting values expressed by this stunt.

1. Courage: If you dare sit among those tough guys, you deserve a beer.

2. Open mind: If you won't judge those guys by the way they look and still sit among them you deserve a Carlsberg.

3. Carelessness: If you don't care what other people do or look like and you just do what you came to do, you deserve a Carlsberg.

So besides de buch of views they get, they still give a strong, interesting brand statement. I liked it.

2:48 PM  
Anonymous -1-T-M- said...

It must be a slow day for me as well, I don't get it.

If there were only 2 seats left why did they continue selling tickets, why are there up to 7 non-biker couples, all seated, spot lighted and being cheered on and most of all, what film would be of interest to those tattooed hell raisers along with the few brave, racially, sexually diverse, non judgemental couples?

I'm thinking a retrospective of either one of these three misleading titled films:

- 'Missionary Man' the 2007 American action film co-written, directed by and starring Dolph Lundgren.

- 'The Black Rider', the 1954 British thriller film.

- 'The Hellcats', also known as 'Biker Babes', the 1967 outlaw biker film.

4:22 PM  
Blogger Bock McMillan said...

I totally loved it! ..and I cannot really see that it is "anti-biker" at all, quite the opposite it is anti-prejudice about bikers.

Brave and open minded people who donĀ“t judge books by their covers truly deserve Carlsbergs, well-cooled!

4:31 PM  
Anonymous josh said...

@Luis Miguel: good observations. I agree completely.

I actually felt a smile on my face when the bikers started applauding the first couple. Great brand-building ad.

4:54 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

> it is anti-prejudice about bikers.

it is anti-prejudice about everyone. and inspiring to be brave and to take a chance on the unknown.

I-)

6:42 PM  
Blogger MrPlywood said...

Damn, the two seats were smack dab in the middle, I would have taken them in a heartbeat!

12:49 AM  
Blogger Sarah Bahbah said...

I'm with Bock and Luis on this one.

Great stunt.

3:08 AM  
Anonymous cath said...

Louis, I kind of agree with you. I think this is a good explanation of the ad's intent, but I'm not sure it works quite as intended.

First of all, I think this ad overstates the amount of bravery actually required to take those seats, and that's where the perception of an anti-biker attitude comes in (if you deserve a beer just for sitting there, those dudes really must be scary). I'm trying to imagine a parallel ad in which two "brave" white people go and sit in a theatre full of black people and are rewarded with applause and beer simply for not being so racist as to walk out and demand a refund.

I thus wonder how many people really walked out of that theatre. I'm a bit freaked out by the douchebaggery they display by doing so, and I'm hoping that either the stunt was fake or it took them a really long time to find these people. Or maybe these folks just figured they must have walked into the wrong film and are going back out to check the marquee.

So, while the ad might be saying, "Carlsberg is for the brave and open-minded," what I hear is "Carlsberg is for anyone who's not a completely prejudiced chicken-shit."

4:33 PM  
Blogger copyranter said...

Yes, I was waiting for somebody to write the "f" word; I'm not convinced it's real either.

5:40 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

An interesting commercial. Mostly, I'm fascinated that in all of the couples who sat, it was the man on the left and woman on the right meaning he always was the first down the aisle. Why? Weird.

10:15 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I think it is a gay replica of the heineken-stunt...

7:23 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

@Luis Miguel
You are right: these are the values the client wanted to communicate in order to deserve a carlsberg.

@copyranter
It's real, trust me.
I was there
For our experiment we could use a whole cinematheatre where we placed the 148 bikers and 5 hidden cameras. With a hidden cam at the ticket boots we picked out the right couples. A nice lady at the ticket controle (one of us) told the couples that there was a tech. problem in their specific theatre and that the film viewing was moved to theatre "24"...

grtz
k

3:06 AM  

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