Nissan plays the hero with viral video

Nissan plays the hero with viral video

Has Nissan gone too far with its viral campaign? Or is this the first of a new line of hard-to-spot-it's-fake viral strategies. Watch it here. Tell us what you think.

October 19, 2011 3:47 by Precious de Leon

It’s hard to surprise people anymore, especially when it comes to media and entertainment. Maybe it’s because of the crassness of Reality TV programmes. Maybe it’s because we’ve evolved as media consumers to tune out content that we think is irrelevant. No matter what the reasons, it’s definitely become more challenging for entertainers, companies and even your mentors, to keep your attention for longer periods of time.

This is none more evident than in marketing and advertising. And as a result, billions of dollars are invested just for one single thing—for brands to get YOU to notice them, even just for a little bit. Investing in creating shareable content, and creating media that is ‘viral’—a word that has transformed itself from being undesirable to coveted.

Competition is so tough, in fact, that there are only a few brand-associated stunts, uh I mean advertising, has ever really left an indelible mark in our collective psyche.

And with that, we commend Nissan’s efforts in creating a ‘news clip’ of a truck that has managed to pull of the extraordinary stunt of the saving a passenger plane. The truck just so happens to be a Nissan Frontier, of course.

I got wind of this video through a friend’s Facebook post. She thought it was an actual news clip. I watched it and was unsure at first. But what solidified my view that it had to be the product of the viral marketing brains at Nissan is because the film clip was to manicured and the ‘eye witnesses’ over-acted quite a bit.

Watch the video to here and see what you think:

An article from Motor Trend mentioned that the video was designed to promote the midsize truck’s payload.

Launched only sometime in late September 2011, some people still think this is an actual clip. Hopefully, though, with articles like this one, things will be clarified. Regardless, this is mission accomplished for the marketing guys at Nissan. Because, they did get us excited and talking about their brand strategy.

It even suspends our reality for a bit, before we start to question if the landing gear would be too big for the car or if that kind of force of momentum from the airplane may even flip the truck.

Here’s the 30-second ad that supports the campaign: