Scotty, in post #27 you presented a poorly formulated argument:-
You first state that product identification is subtle - that's fine, I have no argument with that.
Then you cite an actual but unrelated viral marketing case ("Brand X") - that's fine, I remember it (although your description contains inaccuracies but not relevant here)
But then you jump straight to this conclusion:-
You made no attempt whatsoever to relate your example case back to the RedSox video, so as a consequence it's irrelevant at this point. So I called you on it.
When you responded you chose not to strengthen your argument by relating the "Brand X" case to the RedSox video (as I expected), but instead chose to accuse me of obfuscation, not playing the game and causing a sideshow. (Wow! I did all that in just 2 lines of reply?
). In my opinion a somewhat ironic accusation in light of the post to which I was referring. You also chose to throw in a couple of lightly veiled insults which were supposed to sound clever, but didn't.
Anyway I searched out the "Brand X" video which you cited and had a look at it. Apart from the fact that both are in colour, both are in English, and neither starred Russell Crowe, I couldn't find any similarity between them. But perhaps that's just something to do with me being an "uncritical audience". I'd be happy to be enlightened...
What I really don't understand is what you see in the RedSox video above that makes you think it's viral. Who is going to look at that video and say "Wow, that's fantastic! I need to send this to all my mates!". What reason is there for it to go viral?
The flag? Americans are surrounded by flags, why would the one here inspire anyone to forward this video to all their friends?
The baseball? There is an enormous amount of baseball stuff on the internet including video of amazing plays - why would anyone choose to forward the video above instead of something more spectacular?
Fenway Park? Why would this cause anyone to forward the video to all their friends? Incidentally, my understanding is that the RedSox and their fanbase are amongst the most hated in the Major Leagues, so non-RedSox fans would be unlikely to even look at this (unless maybe they had an interest in sports photography).
The flag+baseball+Fenway together? Is this imagery so unusual and so inspiring that people are going to start firing this video off to their mates? I would imagine that Americans see this sort of stuff so often that it wouldn't even register with them in the video.
Of course the video will be picked up by photo blogs/forums which will boost it's view count, but I don't image it would be more than a few thousand or so, maybe even a few tens-of-thousands - but still, hardly the numbers viral marketers would be looking to achieve. In any case, readers of photo blogs in most cases would have already bought into a brand, so this style of marketing attempt would probably achieve very little in that environment. Almost 3 weeks since upload and YouTube shows 6835 views, hardly figures that would be having the marketers knocking the tops off the champers. (For comparison, "Brand X" is around 270,000 views).
Something else not obvious to me is who is the target group for this campaign. If it is a marketing campaign then surely there would be a target group? Perhaps you can provide some insight...
The comments above are referring to Nikon. I do see this video as being intended to promote Boston University and perhaps more generally life around Boston.
Cheers.