• by Steve Smith , Staff Writer @popeyesm, November 10, 2010

What makes a viral video, well, viral? One of the things many of the viral hits have in common, Visible Measures' CMO Matt Cutler told me once, is the "how'd-they-do-that?" quality. Whether it is the CGI dancing babies or the subway stairwell turned into a piano keyboard or Roger Federer's William Tell tennis stroke bit, many of the viral ad hits make the viewer wonder what it took to pull that off? Was that real? And so we get the weird follow-up "making-of" videos attached to viral hits. But in most cases, the can-you-believe-it?" quality in the video is just a way of getting attention that is itself detached from the brand.

The beauty of the new Pure Performance spot for the Subaru WRX STI model is that it marries the wizardry of a viral spot with the very technology behind the car. The amazing hat trick involved having the car create an animated film by mounting a camera on the Subaru as it went at just the right speed past a series of sequential drawings. The video starts with a bit of an obscure set up involving flashes of test patterns and remote voices giving commands to start shooting. Then we cut into an animated bit involving the car getting up to speed. The black and white animated scene is a fantasy sequence involving the Subaru avoiding a monster and making improbably leaps. But the camera pulls back to reveal it is shooting through a window of the car onto a wall of sequential images that are creating the effect because the car is passing by them at just the right rate of speed to create that basic magic of animation -- the illusion of motion.

Admittedly, it is not the easiest hat trick to explain. In fact the how-to video from agency DDB Canada has to walk us through not only the painstaking process of production but also the optical principles involved. And arguably, it may be just a bit too intricate a trick for many viewers to grasp. The extended cut of the commercial is worth seeing, as is the making-of video accompaniment. Any agency creative will cringe at what these masochists put themselves through to get this thing right. This is the kind of high-wire one-upsmanship that is going to drive agency creative department back to the age of Mad Men levels of alcohol consumption.

Still, the basic branding message is made. The car made the movie. If the viewer sticks with the idea, it makes a solid branding vehicle (no pun intended). We have seen some digital camera companies use the product to make the commercial and so make the point about its quality. And at least one other auto brand used their car's precision to play a drum tune. But two questions come out of this trend. First, are the consumers really tracking the complexities of the trick well enough to make the real connection with the brand? All of these projects take some lengthy explaining. It is a long and twisted story to tell to make the brand's real point about itself.

Second, how far will this compulsion to perform these branded "how'd-they-do-that?" tricks drive agencies? What kinds of really scary RFPs will come of this trend? Don, Roger? Fix me an Old Fashioned, will you? Look at what they want us to do now.