OPEN

So thinking about mass media-driven “viral” campaigns my mind turned to the Cadbury’s Gorilla, a TV ad in the UK last year that sparked a frenzy of emails, YouTube spoofs, blog posts, Facebook groups and all the things an ad exec must dream of when he mutters something about viral and social networks to his creatve team.

In fact The Guardian carried a write-up of how the genius of the team at Fallon helped Cadbury’s bounce back from its salmonella scandal.

A massive success, then. So what next?

This ad wasthe equivalent of a one hit wonder – and its currency is sliding out there. Just take a look at these the top groups in Facebook: the main thing that is happening is people leaving…

And in fairness the one wall post you can see on the largest group is someone asking why the ad are no longer on TV: a true fan (why she can’t just watch it on YouTube, I’m not sure…)

The creative was massively successful in getting distributed across the networks by sharing and becoming part – momentarily – of the cultural zeitgeist to the extent that people would want to remix it with, say the Eastenders theme or excerpts from X-Factor.

But while Eastenders and X-Factor remain part of our popular cultural landscape the monkey fades. Was it like deely boppers, Flat Eric, Nena: a one-hit wonder, not built to last. Maybe that’s asking too much… After all the brand’s here to stay, no?

Image: the Wikipedia entry’s illustration of deely boppers – coincidentally on brand for Cadburys – surely they aren’t that smart.

: : Via Robin Grant who also points to some analysis by Scamp. The latter also points out that Fallon – undisputed king of UK mass advertising in 2007 – got a 9/10 from Campaign magazine – what, he asks, does it take to get a 10? Well, for all their campaigns to be as good as Sony Bravia and Cadburys, would probably do it… now that’s definitely asking too much.