Viral Marketing: Bike Hero

I've always been one to appreciate so-called "viral" marketing, at least when it avoids the cliches or the darkest lies of the genre. At its worst, it's merely misleading - merely duplicating the flashing lights and crappy cameras of YouTube clips doesn't quite overcome the suspicious fact that most of these ambitious "filmmakers" only have one video on their accounts. Hmm. . .

Anyway, this one follows the formula to a T (it was produced by prestigious advertising firm Droga5 and plainly sponsored by Activision), but the whole thing is so slick and well-produced that I'll let the fakey "Lol my friends made this" pretensions of the thing slide. The particularly observant among us may want to count the number of times that they use camera tricks to make it look like they did it in one take.

EDIT: There's a chance these videos have been taken down. No doubt YouTube expects payment for free advertising and Freddy's response video was murdered through association. I'll check it out tomorrow and repost if needs be. If you'd like to watch it now, I'm sure some shifty YouTuber has already stolen the clips.



Even better, this guy (star of the infamous YYZ contest entry) has made a video response, which begins "What's up, viral marketing douchebags?" and promises "no closed roads, no CGI, no planted cars or joggers, no hidden cuts in camera moves. Just Dragonforce, a pair of wheels, and cojones [sic] the size of grapefruits."

Hey, it can't be civil rights and copyright every day.