Doritos Viralocity – another chance to attempt a viral video

Viral Video & Doritos Viralocity Entry

Last month I entered a contest by putting a video on YouTube that was essentially an audition to be in a commercial in LA.  The people putting on the contest gave the impression that the video with the most views would be the most likely to win, but in the end they chose someone who actually had very few views – a tenth as many as I had in fact.  Smart on their end I suppose because it encouraged people like me to spread it everywhere which in turn got them more exposure.  But pretty underhanded when it actually didn’t matter at all in the end.

Doritos has come up with a contest that is similar, except that the winners actually will be based on views and other social media efforts.  It’s really a pretty brilliant concept really.  You create a video for their new chip flavour and try to make it viral.  The entry that goes the most viral wins up to $250,000.  Not too shabby.  But if you don’t win, your efforts won’t necessarily go unrewarded because there are actually prizes for the top 344 videos!

It’s all done on a points system comprised of video views, ratings, being favorited, shares on twitter & facebook, and even things like coming up in the top 5 search results in Google or having the video viewed in other countries.

It really is a great idea all around.  Doritos could pay a social media / advertising company big money to try to come up with a viral video, or they could just engage their own customers to do it by the hundreds and spread it to everyone they know.  There’s huge incentive for people to come up with something good and push it on everyone they know because there are so many prizes and the top one is so big.

So far there are over 600 entries.  Since my biggest successes on YouTube have been creating parodies of recent viral videos, I decided to stick to that format with my entry.  It’s based on the video of the 3 year old who was crying over Justin Bieber that went up on YouTube last month and currently has almost 3 million views:

Here’s the spoof that I made with Craig Weckerle and Marc Smith:

And now I begin the process of using every social media tool I can think of to spread the word.  My only complaint about the contest is that they didn’t have an entry period and then release all of the videos at once to create a more even level playing field.  Some videos have been up for 3 weeks already so have a huge head start.  One of the top videos is also starring a YouTuber with over 275,000 subscribers so every video he does is essentially viral – sort of like having amateurs compete against professionals really, but again, there are plenty of prizes available so although the top spot may be pretty far away, I definitely think I can get in the top 344

Having said that – I need your help! The whole idea behind viral videos is that they get spread from person to person, so just click here to see the Doritos Viralocity page with all the easy sharing options.  Thanks for your help and I’ll update you here after the contest with how my video did!