Our ironic Christmas video, “Befriend a Geek” that parodied a charity ad campaign appealing to people around the World to “make a friend this Christmas” was featured on the Worldwide home page of YouTube on Christmas Eve.
At that point we had already clocked up over 20,000 views of the video and were incredibly pleased with its performance, but the featured spot on YouTube rocketed the numbers to 200,000 in under a day.
We’re now at around 330,000 views (including those on Vimeo) with over 50,000 people paying a visit to the supporting website from 142 countries. The response from the public to the video has been a varied mix. Certainly a lot of American teenagers took it very seriously being either moved to tears or furious at the implication that geeks need or deserve this sort of assistance! But on the whole it seemed to make people laugh. I’d recommend reading some of the 2,000 comments on YouTube if you enjoy a giggle.
We had great fun helping the film maker Will Savage put the video together and its success, which far exceeded our expectations and is certainly down to Will’s exceptional talent, has been really satisfying. I’m still not entirely sure how Ed feels about his new found YouTube stardom, but he certainly gets a lot of recognition for his oustanding portrayal of a sorrowful geek in the video’s comments. Maybe a fanclub awaits?…
One Comment
Just proves most Americans still don’t get irony.
Love the video – well done to all involved!