A few years ago, Chicago power-pop band OK Go were rehearsing for a live show, which included videotaping a dance routine for their single, “A Million Ways”.
The clip accidentally leaked onto the web, and spread quickly, garnering millions of views and even homemade tributes to it.
So in 2006, they filmed a follow-up video, set to their clever and poppy ”Here It Goes Again.”
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The cost
- 10 days. 8 days of choreography, one day of setup and one afternoon of shooting. 14 takes. No editing.
- $2,000 to rent eight treadmills (they bought them from a used treadmill dealer and returned them a week later at a small loss)
- 10 days of buying dinner for lead singer Damian Kulash’s sister, who let the band shoot the video in her house in Orlando
The results
- Over 47 million views on YouTube, including over 1 million in the first 24 hours
- 188,481 ratings – averaging 5 stars
- dramatically increased album sales
- dramatically increased ticket sales and a bigger tour contract, (including concerts in Moscow, where their CD wasn’t even released, resulting in….
- better negotiation leverage with their record label
What do you think? Was it worth the cost?
This took a clever idea and ten days of practice. Before you buy another billboard, newspaper or magazine ad, consider what you could do cheaply that has a viral potential.
