New Tippex “Hunter shoots a bear” campaign goes viral

Tippex has barreled into the viral media fray with an impeccably executed YouTube campaign, titled “NSFW. A hunter shoots a bear!”, created by Parisian agency Buzzman. The video creates an interactive choice at the end where you decide what the hunter should do to the bear. Your choice then redirects you to their campaign microsite, and you can interact even further.

The campaign message is “Help me rewrite this story” and you can type in how you want the hunter to interact with the bear. Timed to coincide with the back to school rush in the USA, these sorts of campaigns create fun interactivity and fans rush to figure out the keyword list. I’m sure that the full list will be posted on the internet very soon, but in the meantime why don’t you post your favourite commands in the comments section?

The video has had 650,000 views as of 03 September 2010 and was uploaded on August 25, but you can bet that number is just the beginning and will soon blast into the millions.

Unfortunately, they made the mistake of not persuading a cyber-squatter to relinquish their username: http://www.youtube.com/tippex. They might lose some views because of this, but with the viral spread it should be negated. On the other hand, youtube.com/tippex is probably wondering why its channel is suddenly getting thousands of hits.

Although I’m very impressed with the Tippex campaign, it is not completely original. Burger King and their ad agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky (assisted by The Barbarian Group) released Subservient Chicken on April 8, 2004 and One Of The Lads (they seem to have closed) released my personal favourite “Car Wash Girls“, produced by Scenestealer, around about the same time.

Additionally, I feel the “NSFW” in the title is a cheap manipulative shot and the campaign could have done just as well without it. On top of that, do people still use Tippex? The people flocking to YouTube to interact with this campaign probably haven’t picked up paper and pen in years, let alone Tippex. Is the digital space the correct place for correction fluid marketing?

Nevertheless, great viral campaign and another YouTube marketing triumph.