The Week’s Best Viral Videos & Video Marketing Lessons – Super Bowl Edition

When history looks back on this week in the viral video world, the only thing they’ll remember is the Super Bowl and all the various online video buzz the commercials generated. The truth is, there were a lot of great videos this week, and only some of them were Super Bowl related. We have angry athletes, amazing athletes, cute animals, funny amateur short films, rap battles, and much more.

Grab a coffee–or tea, whatever you prefer–and enjoy some of the week’s best viral videos.

Super Bowl Bound

A lot of ads from the upcoming Super Bowl have been released online early by the advertisers–which says a great deal about the power of the Internet. I wrote about a bunch of these ads here, but I thought I’d still include my favorites in this week’s round up.

Volkswagen owned last year’s Super Bowl with their “The Force” ad featuring a mini Darth Vader. Unfortunately, their attempts to recreate that magic are a little flat in this year’s ad:

Click here to watch the video.

While Volkswagen’s ad is a slight disappointment to me, Toyota’s Camry ad may win best Super Bowl spot:

Click here to watch the video.

And Audi’s is a dark horse candidate in my opinion, with a hilarious vampire-take on bright headlights:

Click here to watch the video.

But by far… the Budweiser rec-league hockey game is my favorite:

Click here to watch the video.

Non-Super Bowl Brands

Old Spice launched Old Spice Man with a “super bowl” commercial that never even aired during the big game. So it’s no surprise to see them employing a similar strategy this year. The ads are already online, but won’t debut on television until the day after the Super Bowl. The new ads show Old Spice interrupting ads for other real products (also owned by P&G), and I expect the online and television portion of this campaign to get tons of attention:

Click here to watch the video.

Thinkmodo struck again with another buzz-worth hoax video–this time some fake flying humans in NYC to help promote the movie Chronicle:

Click here to watch the video.

Speaking of the Super Bowl… EA Sports is getting more of their annual online video buzz from their Madden version of the upcoming Super Bowl game:

Click here to watch the video.

Microsoft’s Kinect teamed up with the new Star Wars game for an ad promoting them both… and the results are pretty funny:

Click here to watch the video.

Twitter knows the way to viral video viewers’ hearts… intentionally bad production values! Here’s their cheesy homage to tech company recruitment videos:

Click here to watch the video.

This Week In Sports

Sports videos are always going to be popular–well, at least as long as sports are popular. Sometimes it’s an incredible act of athletic ability, but other times it’s a colossal fail… and this week we have some of both.

If you like the NBA, you’re already familiar with Blake Griffin. If you are not familiar with him, allow me to introduce you to why he’s so popular:

Click here to watch the video.

Griffin’s not the only NBA star who had a huge jam this week. Lebron James can dunk too:

Click here to watch the video.

Not all the NBA highlights are positive ones. And when a man misses a free throw as badly as this guy, well I have a responsibility to bring that content to you:

Click here to watch the video.

Here’s a talented young Russian hockey player named Alexander Radulov (I’ve actually seen him play in person, as he used to play for the local team). In addition to being talented… he’s also very angry at his coach:

Click here to watch the video.

This kid is probably going to go down in history as one of the all-time most talented ball boys:

Click here to watch the video.

Tallest high school basketballer player in the world plays like you’d expect the tallest basketball player in the world to play… with dominance:

Click here to watch the video.

Great Performances

Here’s a dog in a vet’s office, which is not all that uncommon. But one that has a key job to do in the business’ daily operation is quite uncommon indeed:

Click here to watch the video.

Here’s an amazing video I think a lot of you will enjoy. It’s a rap battle in the UK between a 17-year-old kid and his former teacher:

Click here to watch the video.

Impossible pool trick shots? Yes, please:

Click here to watch the video.

This is as strange as talents get, and exactly why the Internet was created:

Click here to watch the video.

Love car explosions? You’re really going to love a car explosinon, in HD, at 1000 frames per second:

Click here to watch the video.

What does your brand & logo say to a five year old? You may not care from a business standpoint, but your sense of humor is going to want to check it out:

Click here to watch the video.

Wakeboarding videos aren’t really anything new–unless they’re shot in Alaska like this video:

Click here to watch the video.

Sometimes the act of describing a video makes you feel silly, so let me just tell you that this next video is weird, and it got a lot of views this week:

Click here to watch the video.

I also loved a couple of short films I saw this week–both go for humor, and both succeed:

Click here to watch the video.

Click here to watch the video.

Tags: Freddie Wong, funny, hoax, sports, Star Wars, television, Twitter, viral, viral video, YouTube