Sunday, July 31, 2011

An Interesting Way to Create a Viral Video

Alama Drafthouse Cinema in Austin, Texas, got real creative when they received a phone call from an unhappy customer who was thrown out of the theater after violating their no-texting-during-a-movie policy. They created a viral video of it.



Here was their description under the video:

We do not tolerate people that talk or text in the theater. In fact, before every film, we have several warnings on screen to prevent such happenings. Occasionally, someone doesn't follow the rules, and we do, in fact, kick their asses out of our theater. This video is an actual voice mail from a woman that was kicked out of one of our Austin theaters. Thanks, anonymous woman, for being awesome.

Become a fan on Facebook -- www.facebook.com/alamodrafthouse


For more info on the Alamo Drafthouse, visit www.Drafthouse.com.


They lost a great opportunity here to drive more traffic to their Facebook page and website because they'd didn't add the http:// in front of their links. If they had, YouTube would have made those links clickable links.

In less than two months, this video (and an uncensored companion video) have received 4.7 million views! And all they did was take the recording of an angry customer rant, add text in a creative way, and post the video. - And became heroes in the process.

While some of us like to talk when we are in a movie theater (I'm certainly one of them), there are a ton of moviegoers who simply want to enjoy the movie without a lot of background chatter or light glare from texting maniacs. To them, Alamo Drafthouse is a clear winner.

An interesting sidelight. They uploaded the video on June 3rd. On June 7th, Yahoo News carried a story about the video. 1.6 million people went to see the video after reading about it on Yahoo News.

Hint: If you want your YouTube video to go viral, start by making sure Yahoo News (or other news aggregation sites) write about your video. Of course, Yahoo News isn't going to cover the humdrum book trailer, but if you have a video that is creative, interesting, funny, or controversial, make sure the major news sites hear about that video.

If you want to see what videos are currently going viral, check out http://www.videoinbox.com, which showcases the top 5 new viral videos every day.
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