SOC10: The Domino Effect of a Viral Video

[Intro Music]

Announcer: You’re listening to one in a series of podcasts from the 2009 HighEdWeb Conference in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Jared Lyon: So, as Stephanie said, I�m Jared Lyon. I�m a web developer at the Rochester Institute of Technology.

Mark Marcello: And I�m Mark Marcello. I�m a web developer also at Rochester Institute of Technology. RIT�s in upstate New York. We have about 16,000 students there, sort of pretty good sized school. The one thing that makes this presentation interesting is that we don�t have a marketing division. We work in publication so we work closely with admissions, news to do the marketing on campus, but there�s no one entity that�s handling this. So it�s kind of a little fun project of ours I guess.

Jared Lyon: And it�s difficult working in an environment where you have no one that makes the final call on things. We have eight different colleges and each college sort of does their own thing and sometimes it becomes difficult where you say, �Uh, you have to put the RIT logo on your website, you know, I mean you're a college.� But they�re like, �We want to be, you know, known more than RIT.� Well, RIT is the parent brand and those are some interesting conversations because we�re� it�s cross divisional and so they�re like, �Whoa, you�re not even in our division. You can�t tell us what to do.� And then it has to go up the chain and then finally someone makes them put the logo on their website.

So, yeah, totally not our role to make videos. We are web developers, but we just felt very enthusiastic about this one thing that we�re going to be talking about and that�s how it all started. So this is what we�re going to be going over. Characteristics of our videos, marketing different percentages that have changed over the years, inspiration for our video, we�ll show our video; and then timeline to go on by. And I think that�s the really interesting part about our presentation because if any of you have read the description in the booklet, we have� Right now, it�s over 200,000 views on our video.

So it�s pretty cool, pretty vital, right? And then what you can possibly do for viral videos. So what makes a viral video? There�s probably more characteristics than this. These are the ones I�ve come up with and I think almost every video that I know of that�s a viral video fits into one of these five categories; most of them cross the categories. Like if you think about the Numa Numa video with these kids singing this song. It�s humorous, it�s creative and, of course, there�s always luck. Any viral video, there�s always a luck factor that you can�t necessarily manufacture a video that will be viral.

If it was that easy, then everyone would be doing it and unfortunately that�s not what�s happening. And so humor, Numa Numa, The Evolution of Dance, that�s another humorous one, but is also creative so they cross the categories. Uncommon content. That�s sort of the more of a nebulous category that I was sticking a lot of things into, but a lot of performances, if you�ve ever showed a video with� There�s like some sort of Cirque de Soleil performances which those people are amazing and you guys know Cirque de Soleil? I�ve gotten some of those videos forwarded to me before. And other things like someone�s Mark's race car things. Those are just uncommon content and it�s rare to duplicate is another part of that category because if it was that easy to do, then it wouldn�t be uncommon.

Mark Marcello: The race car one was Ken Black. He�s a co-owner of DC Shoes. He has a Jim Kohana video which is just him driving his car and then they have DC Promotion throughout the video and the first one had� it�s like over 1,500,000 views and I mean it�s the cost of the video and then you get that huge of an audience. I mean you can�t get that with televisions; that�s wonderful.

Jared Lyon: Also, it�s� We�re in sort of a secondary realm of viral videos. There�s a lot of humorous viral videos and they�re just some random kid biting his brother�s fingers or stuff like that, but in this realm, we�re in marketed viral videos and that�s a smaller subset for sure because you want to market something, so how do you do that without being too heavy handed because if it is, then no one�s going to share your video because it feels marketed and people respond to that. If they know you�re just marketing something to them, they�re not going to forward it on. It�s not cool. Why would they want to pass it on other than people within your community?

So for example, this video that we did there was another video that ended up being on TV but it was just a marketed video, but a lot of people after they saw our video, they�re like, �You should�ve just used that for the television commercial because it was so much cooler.� So there�s the cool factor, but that�s probably in one of those creativity, uncommon humor, compelling message. The compelling message videos, I think, they tend to not be extremely humorous but it�s like things like the Dove evolution of beauty commercial where there was this woman and she just looks like a normal woman and then it�s a quick time lapse where they�re putting the makeup on and they�re photoshopping her, they�re moving into her head up, they�re slimming her down.

Dove created the commercial just to show you, �This is what we view beauty over here, but look how much like transformation had to happen. You know, what is real beauty?� So those are the compelling messages once and sometimes there�s the tearjerker one where there�s a father who has a son who�s autistic and they ran races together, marathons and triathlons. So that�s the compelling message and luck. There�s always luck.

Mark Marcello: A lot of luck

Jared Lyon: Yeah, a lot of luck.

Mark Marcello: We talked about using this for marketing. There�s a lot of figures on this, but what I would focus on is the black lines versus the red lines. In 2006, the black bars are the viewers of online videos and then in just two years, the percentages more than doubled in some cases. So where other medias � newspaper, not as many people are reading newspaper. Online videos are really a trend that�s increasing. Just some stats, 70% of the Internet users in the US view online videos. That�s a big number and that�s 44% of the population of US.

So that�s� I mean, just so significant. That�s your target audience. Anyone of those people watching those videos could be a student coming to your school or whatever. The benefits, this is cheap� I mean, our video, we spent� We bought the HD camera in the dominoes. So we spent around $1,000 maybe?

Jared Lyon: A little less, though, a little less.

Mark Marcello: For over 200,000 views. I mean, that�s amazing.

Jared Lyon: So we�re very enthusiastic. I mean, we bought the camera, which I bought for another thing as well, but then we bought the dominoes because no one was really willing to give us money. Even the marketing committee for this festival that we did the video for, they weren�t as enthusiastic as about us.

Mark Marcello: The effects are long lasting. We made this video� It went live back in� Was it May?

Jared Lyon: April 24th.

Mark Marcello: April 24th and� Gosh, four months after that, a newspaper called me up and I was on the front page and then a week after that, it was on a TV spot on the news for like 30 seconds, whatever. So it was months after the video came out and we�re still getting hits now. I mean, it hasn�t completely bottomed out yet and it�s just one video.

Jared Lyon: Yup. Just a few, just a few.

I know. I hope we�re not building it up too much. Yup, it�s coming up.

Mark Marcello: This is a tidbit of information. Every minute, almost a full base of video is uploaded to YouTube. So, it�s� Video is really the way to go.

Jared Lyon: Ooops, that�s me. Not that I meant. Yeah.

Mark Marcello: Why we did the video? It was a promotion for this festival RIT has every year called �Imagine RIT, Innovation and Creativity Festival� and we had a new president come to RIT and he wanted to stir up the community and get people to show off innovate and creative things they�re working on and normally no one will know about them because they�re not marketed. So we were both on the marketing and PR committee for that and we came up with ideas. So the first year we had this poster contest and a viral video contest. As you can see, we had 35 posters and 6 viral videos the first year. Then the second year we had much less. So we had to think of other ways to market this.

So we were into one of our meetings and we said, �Why don�t we try doing a viral video of our own?� And we came up with Dominoes. They�re fun. And there was a lot of buy-in. We were surprised. They didn�t� I think it�s because our university isn�t used to marketing using viral videos and it�s probably like that in many universities. It�s a newer way of marketing. So we came out of the meeting and said, �Let�s do this on our own.� It sounds like fun and it can�t hurt. What�s that worst that can happen? And then it ended up being the most successful marketing technique of the whole festival.

Jared Lyon: And they�re all like claiming blame to� Or claiming credit for it now and stuff. You know, that�s what happen sometimes. And also what we weren�t told was that there was actually classes that the professor said, �Hey, everyone in this class I want you to create a poster in 2008.� And the viral video was mentioned in the class as well. It wasn�t done in 2009 so that�s why we didn�t have any submissions. That�s me. This is� At this festival, we�ve created these little� They�re just rulers with dominoes taped to them and you could just knock them over and then tip it and then they�d all set the dominoes back up. And there were so many kids there for� I think it�s� It�s almost 7 hours, I think?

Mark Marcello: They went on for 7 hours. It was like it�s the whole 7 hours.

Jared Lyon: And so, you know, these aren�t people that we�re marketing to now necessarily, because these are really young kids. But constantly, 7 hours, we had two monitors playing two different sections of the video. One was sort of a behind the scenes that was muted. So everyone loved it. And these were inspiration for the video. There was� In 2003, Honda Cog, has anyone heard of that commercial? OK. The Honda Cog commercial which I will show in a second� It was in 2003. I just loved it because of the cause and effect relationship. Sony Bravia, when their Sony Vega or Wega TVs, they sort of phased those out and they brought in the Sony Bravia brand. And they have done a series of commercials, but this video in particular that we did with the dominoes was inspired by balls and paint. Very great, all of this, very marketed but cool commercials, and the Guinness Tipping Point.

I think� Now let�s see if I can do this. We were initially going to be on a different projector, but� Let�s do this. I think I can do this. Let�s see if this works. This is the Honda Cog, 2003, $6 million was spent on this marketing campaign. Not just for the video, but they had to buy all the TV spots. And basically, these are all parts of a Honda Accord. I think it�s a Honda Accurate here in the States. But this just aired on TV. Totally different marketing than you�re used to seeing for commercials on TV.

Participant: So it's a Ford wagon not sold in the U.S.

Jared Lyon: And the wheels were weighted on the top because I questioned like, �How are those wheels going uphill?�

[Video]

Jared Lyon: This took 606 takes to complete, literally.

Participant: Do you remember how many hours?

Jared Lyon: I don�t remember but there was many months of preparation but I don�t know how many hours.

Participant:�In a studio I remember something like 27 hours.

Jared Lyon: Yeah. So they�d have to go and just move one thing, just a little bit. They� Sort of. It�s two continuous takes. They said it was one continuous one, but it absolutely is two and you can� There�s a cut that happened. It�s already gone by. But it�s two continuous takes that they just had to keep redoing, redoing. And it�s not something that�s something you just watch. You know, �Well, it�s sort of cool.� And that�s what we were going for. So the weight of that shutting�

[Video]

Jared Lyon: What is the thing� the show called? Does anyone know who Garrison Keillor is? That�s his voice. A prairie home companion? Yeah, that�s him. So that was� I�m just going to show one more of the� One of the four that really inspired us. This one I really love because of the color and the simplicity of all of this.

[Video]

Jared Lyon: So this commercial was 2007. The one that really picked it up with so many Bravia balls and they dumped a quarter of a million balls down the San Francisco Street and the Color Like No Other. So we�re reinforcing that brand that they� And they did a series of them. There�s probably 10 of them that took place in different cities and stuff. But we were looking at� When someone said, �Hey, we want to really do something cool for the commercial or for Imagine RIT.� What do we do? How do we do it? This commercial� Actually, let me go back to the presentation. Where are we? There you go.

So $6 million for the first one. I don�t know how many were for the Sony Bravia ones. Guinness Tipping Point, that was part of a $20 million campaign. It was the most expensive commercial that Guinness had ever done. So� Than there�s us. Somewhere like, �How can we do something as cool as that but with no money, really?� And that�s what we ended up trying to do. These were slides before� In case we didn�t get video working. Honda Accord. That was the Sony Bravia Balls. And none of these were really new concepts.

David Letterman in 1996 dumped two big tubs of rubber bouncy balls down the San Francisco Street when he was in San Francisco for a few shows. So none of these are really new. The Honda Cog, there was a 1987 video called The Way Things Go. It was 30 minutes of this happening and� There�s that one, and then this was the Guinness Tipping Point which is the closest one to Dominoes. There�s Dominoes that happened. It suitcases barrels, cars, and then it ends up they�re hitting books and they unfold� whatever they do. And then it makes a Guinness thing.

So that�s where we were and now finally we get to our video. How do we do it? I think going into it, I wanted it to be very simple. There�s not really any actors in most of those videos, but there�s a lot of color, simplicity and� Here�s our video. Actually, let�s see if I can play this with� The man at the beginning is the president of the university who� Well, the man coming up. It�s a cardboard cutout. He started the festival, so this is the second year of our festival.

[Video]

Mark Marcello: We�re the RIT Tigers, so tiger tail.

Jared Lyon: It was supposed to be a tail. You don�t need to know that for it to be cool, though.

[Video]

Participant: How long did it take you to do all of that?

Jared Lyon: Yeah right.

Mark Marcello: Next slide.

Jared Lyon: That�s the next slide. How about that? I will say though just because some people questioned it. None of those are attached to anything. They�re setup dominoes. On the carpet we have dominoes laying down that the dominoes are stack on top of, because the carpet was so wobbly that we couldn�t set up a domino.

Mark Marcello: So this will be domino railing where you could just tilt it and you�ll all be set up.

Jared Lyon: Yeah. Some people thought they were attached to something, but no, we�

Participant: We all have to agree, though, that was awesome.

Mark Marcello: Thank you.

Jared Lyon: Thank you. Thank you.

[Applause]

Mark Marcello: So here we go. We were asked if it was computer generated. When this� I don�t see how did this work. I think YouTube was becoming popular on the iPhone when we released the video. So on the iPhone it looks surprisingly good on that screen, so people thought it was all computer generated and it�s definitely not, I can promise you.

Jared Lyon: Because we filmed it in HD, I think. That was why. Because it looked so crisp that they�re like, �Did you use Maya for that?� or �What 3D�� No, no� That would�ve been easier actually, I think. But looking at those inspirational videos, they were all sort of real. There wasn�t... They�re really shooting all this paint out in Glasgow Scotland and they�re really dumping all these balls down a street in San Francisco and we wanted that.

Mark Marcello: To answer your question, it took us four nights of setting up dominoes. We didn�t use one of the night�s footage because it was for an alternate ending which we�ll show later on. But it was three painstakingly long nights, part of the day setting them up. We had one camera. So it gives you illusion that it�s all one shot, but we actually� We would set up a long shot, pull off a few dominoes and shoot a section and then keep going and set it up like that, and then Jared and his wonderful editing, you can�t tell most of that.

Jared Lyon: A lot of editing, but yeah� That�s why in the beginning we wanted to show people there�s those black and white panning sections. We wanted to show, �Yeah, there�s a lot of these dominoes set up even if later because we only had one camera.� We�re taking them out and just filming those little shots. But we did set up, you know, thousands, all it was.

Mark Marcello: It took about three months of planning. When we walked out of that one marketing meeting, that�s I guess when we started planning this out and then we bought some dominoes. We ordered some� At first, they were too small and they just� would�ve kept falling over all the time. So we ended up using those, gluing them together to make the stairs that you see go up. And then, yeah, we used 5,000 total dominoes; 2,000 for the stairs and then like what Jared said, laying down on the carpet, making those pyramids that they go up and down. That actually took a lot of dominoes to do.

The copier shot, when it took the machine turns on, that was probably our number one question asked. How did that happen? Is there a button down there? Did you use an RFID tag for it? We just timed it. We use the copier everyday so we know how long it takes to print something. So we just� And then added� You know, film, and it worked out.

Jared Lyon: Sometimes it�s more about the illusion. I mean, normally people, when they watch this, they didn�t know that it was just one camera on these things. But we�re giving you away the secrets� And all of those� The other ones had the secrets, too, where the Cog, they say is one shot, but really it�s two and they later said, �Oh, it�s actually two shots.� And the paint one that I showed, those paint explosions are actually huge barrels of paint that they would CG took out. So you�re seeing paint explode, but you�re not seeing the barrel that was there before. And also it was environmentally friendly, I should say. It took them a week to clean up all that paint. They had to wait for it to dry and then it was sort of like latex that you would peel up.

Mark Marcello: And then a lot of time and patience. It�s like some of the shots setting up a table, maybe it�s some half an hour to do. But the alternate� And they�re never going to show you. It took, I think it was 7 hours on one table to set up all these dominoes. So it can be�

Jared Lyon: And then we sacked it.

Mark Marcello: It was a long time. I was very mad when we did it.

Jared Lyon: It was the original ending and then he came in a few days later when we were doing the next one and I said, �Yeah, we�re not going to use that ending.� And he�s like, �What are you talking about?� And I�m like, �No, it just doesn�t work.� It didn�t quite work for some reason. So going viral. So April 24th is when we had to go live with it because while we were doing this video, we filmed everything in April. A �Get Viral for Big Bucks,� it was what it was called. It was a viral video competition. It came out and we said, �Hey, I think we could do this� and try our domino video because you just had to be at least a part-time student and Mark was a part-time student, so we�re like, �Hey we can submit.�

And that�s why we had to get it live by April 24th, and also on May 2nd, day of the festival. �We wanted the video to be out for a little while before the day of the festival. We wanted it to promote the festival.

Mark Marcello: We ended up winning that contest, too. We took first place for the Get Viral contest and it had a $3,000 prize. So the video paid for itself.

Jared Lyon: Which is awesome. So the first day, Facebook, Twitter, IMs, we just� it was really� everyone in our office. We kept telling people, �Share this around. Share this around. Let�s see what we can do.� And we weren�t expecting, we were just happy when it was mentioned on the radio on the next Tuesday. I was like, �What? It was on the radio?� And people were like sending emails. So amazing that it started taking off. Faculty staff, there�s� We have one email addressed for our faculty staff at RIT and I said, �Hey, you know, why don�t I send this to them and just tell people about it that way.� That was when we got the most hits in this first 12 days.

And then the news department sent it out in a daily e-new letter, and then finally on the day of the festival, we had 68,000 views and I was ecstatic, 68,000. We really weren�t sure what to expect. And then�

Mark Marcello: Worth noting, this is all in YouTube. You�ll see a shift in a minute.

Jared Lyon: All the blue is YouTube and you can see some slight, maybe the red, that�s Vimeo. And I wanted to post this on Vimeo because I really like that site and I thought the quality was better on Vimeo.com. Has anyone heard of Vimeo? Everyone? Yeah. So then this happened. So the gray box on the bottom left, like over there, that�s the first slide that I just showed you. All this red now is Vimeo. This website, it�s sort of an international design inspiration blog called Foobiz.net. It�s primarily in French.

They found the video and they posted it and then NotCot which is another design inspiration-type site found it. Mark Hoppus who�s the lead singer of Blink 182, he posted it on his blog and� Between the two we were tracking what was happening. YouTube has a certain way of their tracking statistic and Vimeo� I like YouTube�s better, I think, than Vimeo but, still� It was harder to find where things were being tracked from on Vimeo.

Mark Marcello: And when you think about Mark Hoppus posting this on his blog, we already posted on our Facebooks, you know, �Hey, check out this video.� But then when this happened, I�m like �Oh my gosh, Mark Hoppus from Blink 182 has our video and repost it again.� And this helped propagate this out virally.

Jared Lyon: Huge. Not expected that it would go this viral and that�s the luck factor that was in there because I think we have the creativity, uncommon content, some of those folk-y blog� I don�t� That�s some Swedish, like 18-year-old girl. All of the views on Vimeo now, like she�s always at the top. I don�t know who�s going to that site, I�ve never heard of it, but that�s helped. All these are key notes obviously, so it could be a lot coming from NotCot and stuff, but these are the first instances of when those things occurred.

Mark Marcello: And there was almost 30,000 views in this one day.

Jared Lyon: Yeah, 30,000 one day. Of course it was after the festival. But I think because we didn�t put a date on it. We specifically didn�t want to and the news department and people came down saying, �You didn�t put the data on the video.� Well, we put it in the description because we wanted the video to last longer than a week and we had to convince them of that, but then it was like, �Hey, we did this video on our own, so��

Gizmodo was the big one that we� I was like, �Oh my god! Gizmodo!� Because that was the site that we go to. These other ones you don�t really go to very often, I mean, Digg but Digg�s sort of different. Gizmodo, that was� It was cool that we�ve got in there. And then Peru picked it up. This blue stripes again from YouTube. This Peruvian, huge newspaper site. It�s like the New York Times of Peru. They posted it on their site and then we started getting more YouTube hits. So a lot of things happened and we�re like� I was obsessive about it, you know. Every day before I left work I will be like, �How�s it doing?� So we are very happy with where it went.

Mark Marcello: So now how could be redo this if we have to do it again? And then maybe you guys can take this advice if you were to take the same route. Because there�s no formula. If there was a formula like Jared said, everyone would just be making viral videos all the time, but� There are five things that we can do to help.

Jared Lyon: So, one, stay objective. Well, I wanted it to be very simple and I wanted color and that was about it and that�s why we ended up scrapping the alternate ending which is the next slide, I think, or the next video. I just� I didn�t feel as cool as the other ones because we are really zooming in on the shots of the dominoes and on YouTube, there�s all kinds of domino things that are happening on YouTube, but it�s always poorly shot. It�s one person and it�s like they�re showing you the whole set of dominoes and you just sort of watch and you get bored and then you fast forward real quick to see where it ends. But this one I intentionally didn�t want people to know where it was going because it was part of that journey.

And I think that happened with the Honda Cog and the Sony Bravia Balls through an extent. All of them. You�re not sure where it�s going and I think that�s a big tip. Because if they see it all in one shot, then there�s no point really watching more. And also as part of the stating your objective, make sure that you have a way of tracking that because University of Maryland did a holiday card in 2008 and it was really cool. I looked at how they did it. They got Connie Chung and all these famous alums from University of Maryland, but they didn�t really track it well and then they posted it on YouTube and it�s had like 2,000 views on YouTube, but what about all those? Because you were always pushing people to your own website and they didn�t track it.

So they have no way of knowing how viral it really went, although people are saying, �Oh yeah, I saw it.� And it was pretty cool. It was a good video. Be yourself. That�s another key thing. Like I said at the beginning, if you�re marketing to people heavy, then they don�t even want to watch it. So we would throw in like an RIT flag and there�s a tiger and we did those subtle things and then at the end it�s really that final, you know, �Hey, come to the festival.� It was really amazing hearing the day of the festival, people coming up and saying they were showing it to their kids, like second grade classroom and stuff.

The president of RIT actually brought it up rarely in a meeting with him. In fact, I think I�ve only been in one but he brought it up and we were both in that meeting. We�re like, �Oh yeah, we�re the guys that did that, just so you know.� So that was cool. Keep it short. Definitely keep it short unless there are some reason why people are extremely engaged to watch more. It�s 2 minutes and that�s easy enough as one of the higher ups at RIT said, �It was just enough that I could show it before I talked at this presentation at some Liberty Hill conference or something.� And that was before the festival which was cool.

Mark Marcello: Any more would have been too long. We had a few people saying it was too long, but� I mean, the overwhelming majority thought it was just fine.

Jared Lyon: Write a good description. I think as part of� The reason why Foobiz and NotCot and Mark Hoppus� The reason why it was found is because within the tags, we have creativity and inspiration and those sites were design inspiration websites. We also had RIT and some of those tags, but I think the reason why those other sites found it was because of those tags because they�re just always looking for cool stuff like that.

And obviously, embrace social media. I think we�ve heard about that enough at this conference. But, yeah, Facebook, all the� Twitter, just everywhere. We tried getting it out to as many people as possible, but even doing that, we only did 6,800 views which was that first 12 days or whatever it was. So even doing that, it needs to be a video that would compel people to share it because they think it�s cool, humorous, uncommon content. Those five factors before.

Mark Marcello: That�s the great part about viral videos. You pay for the production but you don�t pay for any of the advertising. It just says it all for you and�

Jared Lyon: And it�s always happening, sort of. As we were tracking what sites were linking to it, mostly through Vimeo, there was a Russian site that was saying, �Hey, if you�re going to be in the States, you should check out this festival in Rochester, New York.� And there was a Brazil site. I was amazed. Japanese which I couldn�t translate that one very well. But I was trying to translate all of them and I sent them to the head of news saying, �Hey, you know, this video has really taken off.� Plus we wanted to win the competition and get the $3,000.

OK. So this was night 3. This was the initial ending of our video that�s� I sort of scrapped because I was like, �Nope. I�m the final say and we�re scrapping it.�

Mark Marcello: And this was like one of my favorite parts, too.

Jared Lyon: It was cool; it just doesn�t have the same feel. That was my thought of this. Also, because of the video that happens to be in it. That�s me standing up, using no hands, trying to walk up a ladder to get a good shot of this table of� This was I think 1,600 dominoes and we had to choose a wide-angle lens. So it�s not really obvious what we�re trying to do exactly there, but you�ll see right here. And it screwed up, too, the two sets of dominoes�

[Video]

Jared Lyon: So it�s sort of cool. It does have the logo, but I�d later realize, �No, let�s do it this other way because I think it�s simpler and more clean because all the other stuff was shot up-close. One of the colleges are doing, this guy at the� I can�t remember his name, actually, I have it written down somewhere, but at the University of Minnesota, he wrote a book called The Physics of Superheroes and it�s a very well known book and he actually was asked to be a consultant on the Watchmen Movie. We�ve all heard of the Watchmen Movie.

So he was the consultant in the movie saying, �Well, Physics probably wouldn�t quite work like that.� Not that, you know, Physics really work like they do in this movie, but this video has had 2 million views and it�s actually longer than I would think. It�s like 7 minutes, I think. So the science of Watchmen and he goes through these different things that happen within the movie, primarily the blue man, I don�t remember his name, doctor something. Manhattan. So he just talks about it and you know, it was a cool video and I think there�s a lot of comic book fans that likes watching that.

And I think he�s actually on the commentary on the DVD as well. University of Maryland, I mentioned the holiday greeting. And these links will all be� We have a link and that�s to a website that we�re listing of this so you can watch them later. Dude Perfect, Texas A&M� Is anyone here from there? I was talking to� There you go. Dude Perfect. Not that it was a video that your college produced, but it�s hugely popular. These guys from Dude Perfect, they just shoot basketballs and you think, �Oh, it�s something simple.� But they�re like shooting them like from up in a stadium.

They�re shooting a basketball and it�s going through a hoop in the stadium and they�re shooting it from multiple angles and you can watch them at the same time. I think they�re probably doing that a lot and they�re only showing you the cool shots because people are like, �How are they doing this?� And on Good Morning, America, they�re calling them and like, �How�d you do it?� They�re not telling, but it�s like they just sit around shooting basketballs at hoops all the time and they�re six of them. It�s very cool, though. And there are�

Mark Marcello: There is one shot where you can see there�s a bunch of balls and�

Jared Lyon: Yeah. It�s like, �Oh, they�ve just been shooting them.� And you know, they�re sort of off of the site. But they�

Participant: You knew that�s exactly what they...

Jared Lyon: Yeah. I figured. And they all have Texas A&M shirts on though and how great is that marketing right there. So what can you do? Like I said, there�s always a lot of luck and that�s something that you can�t really manufacture in any way. But for us, it was just something that we are very enthusiastic about and we thought it was going to be creative and fun. We didn�t realize necessarily how much work it was going to take the last night of filming. I was editing the video at 4:30 a.m. because we had to submit it at like 8 a.m. the next day for that competition. The same day, 4 hours later.

So that day was excruciating. But it was fun and we were so driven by it that we thought, �This would be cool. It�d be cool.� And we wanted to� It was sort of in spite of the other people. We�re like, �Oh no, we�re going to do this. This is going to kick ass.� So, you know, collaborate. There are some really interesting videos online now. The YouTube symphony in B Flat and the Sour video. They�re all sort of harnessing YouTube and saying, �What can we do with this?� The Sour video, there�s all this different people on web cams and they�ve coordinated it, so they� Like they each have a section of a heart and they sort of put it up in the corner of their web cam and all the four web cams make a heart.

And they� It�s just really interesting. And again, the links will be at the website URL that we�ll list at the end. In B Flat is cool because it�s� All these people playing instruments in this different, like B flat notes, and you can start and end any of these 16 videos at any time and it still makes sort of cool music and I�m like, �How�d they do that? It�s really weird.� Don�t worry about being low budget. I mean, yeah, we did spend some of our own money, but literally, $6 million for the Honda Cog and we spent less than $1,000. And really, the camera I was buying for something else.

So $250 worth of dominoes is what we bought and part of what I have always done is I sort of keep this ongoing list of cool ideas and those videos were right there in that list and they�re sort of in YouTube playlist and I never knew exactly how it would work but then just one day I said, �Hey, why don�t we do dominoes?� So there�s those, you know, random inspirations that you can�t account for.

So this isn�t just cool things that I think other places are doing. Not colleges, but just viral things. This isn�t even a video. There are videos of it but it doesn�t need to necessarily be a video for it to be a cool thing that you do. This is in Australia. They just� These people, these sort of road artists go and set up all this crate men and it�s just like, �Wow, that�s sort of cool.� And easy to do, relatively. And I�m sure a lot of you have seen this, I don�t even know what to call it, but they� The barrel man.

Mark Marcello: The barrel monster?

Jared Lyon: Barrel monster.

Mark Marcello: The one in the last� I believe a college student, the face, the property made this and then he got arrested for it, but they liked it so much they paid him to make the second one. The highway department or whatever?

Jared Lyon: I think that was in North Carolina, I�m not sure. And this was at a coffee festival in Australia again where they basically� There�s four different types of coffee and all the cups are filled and they made a Mona Lisa out of it. There�s a video, a time lapse video of it. It�s just� I mean, it�s just cool. It�s the cool factor and that�s all we have, I think.

Mark Marcello: On this website we have lectures and videos, so all of the videos� Or links to all the videos we talked about, contact information for us and our sites.

Jared Lyon: And then some because there�s actually some parities. Everyone of the videos that I showed, the Cog� They all have parity videos that came along with them later and one of them is really cool called Tango where instead of these balls rolling down the street, it�s all fruit. And it�s just smashing but it�s really vibrant with color and they�re smashing windows and they�re just� It�s a really cool commercial and then they say �Tastes like no other� or something and then they have their brand and everyone of those� The Honda Cog one is also interesting. So you just check them out. And that�s it. Any questions?

Participant: Do you know how all video... So when you create a video and you call it viral, you really don't know where it's going to be posted. Do you worry about losing discretion for rights?

Jared Lyon: To repeat the question, it was basically �Do you worry about rights of other people taking your video and using it as their own?� We do have the rights to the video, complete rights to it and we specifically� People later said, �Why don�t you put music into the video?� Well, I don�t want to deal with the rights with music, you know? This is just bare bones and I like the sound of the dominoes. I think they�re sort of cool, although, you know� After working with this video so much, it�s like, �Oh, OK, there�s the dominoes again.�

Mark Marcello: We actually did have one case where someone took our video because we put up the raw footage and they reposted on their accounts and we contacted YouTube and had them take it down.

Jared Lyon: Yeah. There was YouTube. We posted it to� I didn�t show that we posted it to break.com and DailyMotion as well, but the number of views was minimal, but yeah, there was a couple cases. That was the initial one and then dailymotion had some other people and even on Vimeo someone reposted it. And I submitted a thing like copyright violation to them and they actually ended up taking down within a few days. And I think it was most of the time it�s people that they�re wanting to like create a playlist. Wow, it�s really loud over there.

I�m surprised we haven�t heard the music from next door because I said there was going to be music over there, but� I think people, a lot of times, they�re just trying to create their own playlist and that�s what this guy on Vimeo did, but just a quick thing and they removed it.

Mark Marcello: Because at no point were they try to claim they did it. They just� We don�t want the people to go to their video and watch it, we�d rather get our hits up. So�

Jared Lyon: And to a point and a way we shouldn�t care too much because it�s still promoting the festival which was the main goal of it, but we also wanted to track the hits and stuff so I just filled out those copyright violations.

Participant: You said you get some content mixed with some really good viral videos.. I'm trying to show folks what that exists in the top hits. I think it's just that the academics are doing all this to...

Jared Lyon: Oh yes, yes�

Participant: I posted my version of it.

Jared Lyon: Absolutely.

Participant: I'm certain that universities live with.

Jared Lyon: Did we present that at the TED Conference, I think? Yeah.

Participant: It�s huge, though. But I think in academics are looking over it. They actually have someways to promote it as opposed to a dull paper. That there should be some video or something.

Jared Lyon: Right. Yeah. Even if it�s not promoting literally what you�re doing. I mean, EP Burg and Willet Blendtec, they�re two companies that� You know, they�re� EP Burg is the Diet Coke and Mentos and Blendtec is Willet Blend. They�re just trying to do cool things. I think EP Burg, I�m not even. They�re some sort of entertainment type place, but Willet Blend is just� They sell blenders. And they have these cool videos of them, you know, just blending stuff. I think I remember when the iPhone came out that day. They did one of the iPhones and everyone�s like, �No.�

Mark Marcello: But we looked up the stats and their sales went up 500% after having those videos. I mean, that�s� How else can you do that? That�s so wonderful.

Jared Lyon: And that�s the humor, too, with the one with the lasers. Sometimes if you�re getting too technical, no one�s going to share because it�s not mainstream enough so they have to add in that humor. And also, there was another� One other factor that I didn�t include in that list that I had was community. I think a lot of times, like� Or maybe, did I mention that already? I might have. But getting a community involved, if it�s just your local community, that can be cool for your community and your college, but if you really want to make more of a name, you have to do something that�s going to beyond that.

Like if you just do something that was� If your school is big into basketball and it�s just people saying how great the basketball team is going to be. It�s not really that interesting, like I could see a hundred of those, but you have to do something humorous or those other factors to really get that viral.

Yeah, exactly. Or it�s at the uncommon content of people, you know, face planting while their stomping on grapes or something.

Participant:�I don�t know much on this. And there�s one on YouTube with the CKM.

Participant: One shot and they�re going on the dancers and people are singing the song. Then I signed on in another tracking and voted in there earlier and I said, �My God, my limbs are cool."

Mark Marcello: That�s wonderful.

Participant: No, I'm not but we have the same humor.

Jared Lyon: Yeah. When I was at lunch earlier someone said, �Oh, you�re a presenter? What are you presenting?� I�m like, �Oh, this video�� and he goes, �Oh, the one with the dominoes with the piece of paper and the Tigers thing?� And I�m like, �Yeah.� And I�m like, �Oh my god, it�s so cool that someone saw my video.�

Participant: It's really great for content and stuff. There's one thing they did in Belgium. I don't know what you call them, they dance and the thing.

Mark Marcello: A flash mob? Yeah.

Jared Lyon: Oh yes, flash mobs. That�s another� Yeah. I had that initially in this, but�

Participant: It's so cool! It doesn�t cost you money.

Jared Lyon: There was a wedding video that this couple did and it was� They�re singing Freddie Mercury� It�s a Queen song, I don�t remember what it is. Mr. Fahrenheit. And then it�s just they�re going around this whole wedding party and people are singing the song and it�s very cool as well. So that�s it. Any other questions?

Participant: Did you guys have an extensive film background.

Jared Lyon: Extensive film...

Mark Marcello: Film background?

Jared Lyon: No, I�ve never� Actually, this is the first video camera I ever bought.

Mark Marcello: Never bought the camera for this.

Jared Lyon: Yeah. And I just� I�ve watched enough videos and seen a lot of the domino videos because I just love dominoes, but I didn�t like how they were shot. Because I�m like, �Oh, this could be done so much better.� So when we came up with dominoes, like I said, a lot of these don�t have� They�re not new ideas, but they�re done in a different way, and so, no� I think we all were surprised at how well we edited together. No film background whatsoever, never taken a film class. Domino background, yes.

Mark Marcello: did the domino really going off. OK. Thank you very much.

Jared Lyon: Thank you very much.