On December 13, 2007, I was recruited by W+K (Wieden+Kennedy) to help develop an online strategy and to produce video for the first stage of an ongoing national Nike+China campaign. I was flown to Shanghai, China to work on a 6 month project addressing this Nike ambition. The campaign was centered around NBA superstar Kobe Bryant and 400 boys from all over China. It was a 6 part reality television series, where 24 out of the 400 boys were selected to go to America to train with US coaches and Kobe. Out of the 24 boys 16 were selected to go to Beijing to play in a championship game.
HTTP Echoes is about insightful blog posts and web related ventures. We echo these insights and offer our thoughts on how it relates to web culture.
French Maid TV just posted a video clip on Youtube yesterday (6/26/07) and it was downloaded or viewed over 700,000+ times in less than 2 days. The clip titled “Sexy French Maid TV – How To Share Photos” is a 6:20 minute “provocammercial.” What I find utterly remarkable is how it was presented and how it craftily worked in a smart sales pitch for a new company called Tubes.
For those of you not familiar with French Maid TV, its a series of viral video “How To’s,” taught by sexy French maids. Its the type of entertainment that you pass along to friends and they to their friends’ friends. The video clips are reminiscent of Benny Hill skits minus the Benny and the lil old man. Tim Street the mastermind behind French Maid inspires the hell out of me; as a new media producer, I admire what he has done with his brand and his marketing tactics.
This particular clip was brilliant because the title “How To Share Photos” cleverly showed you how the photo feature of Tubes worked then went on to briefly mention how it was a personal sharing network “that lets you instantly and simply share photos, music, video and documents with everyone you know.”
There have been numerous advertising and marketing agencies that jump on the Youtube or Myspace bandwagon and believe that they are “in the know” with the online media space. They need to take notes because Tim and his team are leading the way and changing the rules of the game. I say give the man a Wikipedia slot already. Oh yeah… don’t tell anyone this, but its the first time that an online “video’mmercial” has actually convinced me to buy into its product… damn did I mention that its a PC product. It looks like a great lil filesharing app. Too bad because, there will be tons of mac users who would be interested in this product.
I’ve posted the clip on my blog so you can see for yourself.
Video | bendrix | 
August 22, 2008 10:25 am | 
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