Viral Videos!
Evan Longoria baseball catch new chivalry commercial for Gillette or viral video magic moment?
[May 17]
One of the Most Shared and top Trending videos on Youtube May 16th was a video clip of Tampa Bay Ray baseball player Evan Longoria playing hero as a celebrity athlete playing the field. In a surely scripted move, Evan Longoria (not to be confused with Desperate Housewives star Eva Longoria, ex-wife of NBA star Tony Parker — there is no relation) appears to save an on-field female sports reporter from certain injury by catching a line drive with his bare hands just above her threatened head. The now viral video started drawing an online audience late last week, but really took off like wildfire over the weekend when YouTube reports it drew over half a million views. But what was the origin of the video? Could it be a brand promotion stunt where a big name corporation funded to film it and then distributed the footage to make their celebrity athlete look like a real life super hero? YouTube analysts believe so.
YouTube reps shared the following internet rumors about how the video really made it to the internet and who was behind releasing it:
Some point to the (subtle?) branding within the footage as an indication that the video is actually a spot from Gillette — Longoria is already a part of the company’s Young Guns 2011 campaign — and Gillette has been known to get creative with their videos, as evidenced by 2010’s Roger Federer trickshot clip that’s been seen 8.4 million times.
That is a huge wave of free marketing for the Tampa Bay Rays, Evan Longoria, and Gillette if that is really the case.
What’s more, if the rumored sponsorship if the Evan Longoria bare handed baseball catch viral video by Gillette is true, then it shows commercial marketing of daily life products is about to change dramatically in the coming years to boot.
Why?
Because if the real way to catch people’s attention with a brand name is to put a product in fornt of their eyes in a viral video that is low-cost to film or promote, then why bother paying big dollars as a corporation for print marketing in news papers, magazines, or coupon flyer inserts in junk mail to get word about your product features commonly accepted and well-known?
If viral videos are the golden ticket to making your product a household brand, even more — why pay millions of dollars to advertise on television commercials?
Why not re-allocate a portion of your advertising budget to research and development projects and just make catchy clips to release and promote online with the hope you might score a viral video hit? Then, you could donate a portion of the proceeds from the sidebar advertising present on YouTube to charity.
If Gillette backed this video hit, that might be exactly what they are attempting to do… and if not — oh well.
It is still a really cool video and now we know the name of a new celebrity athlete — Evan Longoria. We hear he plays for the Tampa Bay Lightening and is quite chivalrous.
And Evan?
If the clip was not staged, you are our new hero.
Here’s the Evan Longoria bare handed baseball catch viral video from YouTube.
“Keep it on the field”, gentlemen. Ladies are present.