Digital

Schweppes viral – what can we learn from it?

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A short film (12min) created by Publicis Mojo, Auckland for Schweppes is topping the viral video charts – a year after it was made. “Signs” was originally created to promote an online Schweppes short film festival.

The story is that of an unhappy & lonely worker in an office in the big city, looking for love. He realizes that the signs were all along there in his neighbouring office. The film was uploaded on video sharing sites in the past but picked momentum after it was posted on YouTube this January. It has picked up more than 1 million views on YouTube and had moved up to No.5 on The Viral Video Chart. Signs is the 5th film in the Short Film Festival and it features the brand only once – albeit fleetingly. There is also a subtle reference to a character putting her finger to her lips – linked to the ‘Shhhhhh…’ of Schweppes.

In India, virals are still being limited to Bollywood spoofs, rendered in glorious 2-D animation. The beauty of the Signs film is that it is unmistakably Schweppes and the brand is clearly linked in all the positive chatter across the globe. The genesis of the idea – a short film festival – is part of the campaign to reposition the brand ‘as a grown up beverage for sophisticated consumers’. The popularity also shows that limiting such content to a micro-site wouldn’t have got them this kind of audience – portability of the content paid off. And the itch to not make it overly commercial also helped the engagement.

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