Editor's Note: This article
has been updated.
LG Electronics has launched a 12-second tweetable video commercial
with a technology that debuted Thursday from 12Seconds.tv. The consumer electronics company asks people to create a 12omercial, a video message 12 seconds in length, to promote the Versa phone that
debuted earlier this year on their behalf.
In the 12Seconds spot, consumers are invited by Jon Oliver of "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" to create their own 12omercial with this pitch: "What is
your Versa Vice?" Members create a 12-second video describing the worst thing they do with their phone such as text messaging while driving or checking Twitter tweets during a meeting. Then they
upload it to a dedicated LG site. The promotion runs one week. The winner gets a trip to Las Vegas.
The 12omerical technology turns short video messages into viral marketing campaigns by
allowing members to embed links on Twitter, Facebook or blogs, or embed videos on Twitter client TweetDeck.
San Francisco-based Xobni, which helps people manage emails, steps up to become the
next branded sponsor in line to run a promotion. 12Seconds cofounder Sol Lipman said one new promotion will launch weekly. "We have three sponsors signed and a bunch in the pipeline," he said.
12Seconds also provides analytics tools to encourage members to share videos and act as the brands' viral marketers on sites such as Twitter. The tools will let members track views and re-tweets, as
well as the search engine that drove them to the site.
And while cofounders Lipman, Jacob Knobel and David Beach managed to launch the Twitter tool with a highly regarded brand name, the Santa
Cruz, Calif. company ran into trouble when an AT&T fiber-optic cable got cut in the morning that affected parts of Silicon Valley. "We were down until close to noon," Lipman said.
The cable cut
knocked out phones and data service to homes and businesses in Silicon Valley. AT&T used Twitter to inform the public that the outage impacted customers in San Jose and Santa Clara.
Founded in
early 2008, 12seconds hasn't raised any capital, but averages 400,000 unique monthly visitors. Brands such as Kodak, General Motors, Starbucks, and Xbox Live have created clips, although not as part
of this launch.