Clever Viral Site Makes Drawing a Stickman Fun

Want to procrastinate away a few minutes this morning? Check out the beautifully simple, yet addictive drawastickman.com.

You try your hand at a drawing a simply stick figure and then take that little guy through some scenarios, drawing new objects each time.

A nice viral.

Why You Never Say No to a Panda

Who says dark comedy can’t be cheesey?

A series of Egyptian ads for cream cheese brand, “Panda“, have gone viral after being picked up by Boing Boing.

The ads cleverly combine ‘average’ looking actors, limited dialogue and the mellow Buddy Holly track “True Love Ways”, with a Panda who could clearly do with a trip to Dr Phil to work out some anger issues.

Here’s a medley of the ad spots.

The Story Behind the ‘Girl Who Quit Her Job’ Viral

So yesterday you probably saw one of the thousands of tweets, Facebook posts or forwarded emails about the girl who quit her job by emailing her boss and work colleagues a series of pictures of herself. The story made the news on a host of websites, blogs and media outlets such as CBS.

“Jenny” was sick of her boss’s attitude and hearing him call her a HOPA (hot piece of ass) on the phone was the last straw. She grabbed her whiteboard and a marker and was photographed quitting via whiteboard messages and stuck it to her boss.

Click here for the full story incase you missed it.

The story spread across the net like wildfire and really got people talking. Some people (such as @adrianweckler) saw through the story immediately as an advertising stunt of some kind. Interesting – I thought. – an ad for who…Sharpie markers? Whiteboards? Others thought it was a clever idea and done by a girl either desperate to market herself into a new job or to throw two fingers up to her asshole boss.

Today the shroud of doubt was lifted and it was revealed that the story was a hoax – a viral marketing stunt by website The Chive.

John Resig, one of the two brothers behind the site said:

“We came up with a hoax that was completely relatable. It wasn’t spread by TechCrunch and Reddit. It was spread by Facebook and inter-office email, everyone wants to quit their jobs like this.”

To be honest, I was a little disappointed that there was no real reason behind the stunt…I’d have prefered it was driven by the makers of whiteboards or HR consultants or some such. Such a clever viral deserved a better purpose than ‘because we can’.

According to Resig, they “didn’t do this for the media. I’d did it almost to prove to myself that I had it in me, To make something go viral at 4:30 in the morning before the world wakes up. You get a pure thrill of watching your site go from 15,000 uniques to 440,000 uniques in a single hour, watching yourself sucker every site from a-z who didn’t do their backstory.”

The story definitely captured peoples attention as it’s something many people will have fantasised about – not just quitting a shitty job but going out with a bang! The story was simple and quick to scan through…afterall there was no lengthy text, just 33 pictures – an ideal viral to spread through workplaces. Speculation about the story’s authenticity and the motivations behind it fuelled the fire and so in under 24 hours the story reportedly had racked up 238,000 Facebook shares and 31,000 tweets.

They say the simple ideas are the best and this viral is definitely case in point.

Old Spice Guy Makes Twitter Fan’s Marriage Proposal

The shirtless, buff, Old Spice guy came onto our screens back in February as part of a successful TV ad campaign for the brand. Within a fortnight the YouTube video had over 2.9 million views and Old Spice guy even made it on to the Ellen DeGeneres show in the US -- such was the ads popularity. The brands social media campaign has been picking up pace in the last couple of weeks. The latest viral sensation, Old Spice have started to create customised videos for key influencers on sites such as Twitter and Facebook -- the likes of Perez Hilton have the Old Spice dude talking directly to them.

The brands simple strategy -- to target bloggers and social-media savvy celebrities with large online followings -- quickly paid off as those who had received a video, shouted it out to all their followers online.

They have now started creating some personalised adverts for ‘average Joe’s’. An Old Spice Twitter fan called Johannes S. Beals tweeted on Monday, “Can U Ask my girlfriend to marry me? Her name is Angela A. Hutt-Chamberlin”. Sure enough Old Spice dude obliged and proposed to Angela:

….and Angela said yes. Romantic -- no. A good story to tell the grandkids -- definitely.

You’ll notice that the personalised videos are all done to the same backdrop…it’s the innovative concept, unique script and drole humour that make the videos a success so they can get away with putting the same green screen background…all eyes are on the ‘hunk’ after all! A great way for the brand to get maximum mileage out of a great concept and reach a huge number of potential customers very cost-effectively.

By the way -- Old Spice guy’s real name is Isaiah Mustafa…alas he shall be forever known as Old Spice guy.