A Decade of Video a Day Uploaded to YouTube

Today YouTube announced that one hour of video is uploaded to the site every second. A decade of footage a day!

Struggling to wrap your brain around that? Well YouTube have launched this really nice site, onehourpersecond.com, which is full of interesting stats and figures which serve to put the volume of video and length of time spent on the site in context.

For example, who knew that ‘In 4 minutes 48 seconds of uploads to YouTube, the ostrich continues running at full speed, traveling 12,384 miles’?

Definitely worth checking out over your morning coffee.

Of course, YouTube being YouTube, they’ve posted a video along the same lines.

In-Flight Safety Video Richard Simmons Style

After spending seven months working in New Zealand, there are many reasons why I love the Kiwis. Now I have another reason…this entertaining in-flight safety video featuring American fitness celeb, Richard Simmons from Air New Zealand.

New Old Spice Advert to Be Leaked to One Lucky Fan

The man your man could smell like, Isaiah Mustafa, is back.

The Old Spice adverts were a viral sensation last year, with one of the videos receiving almost 29 million views -- making it the most viewed advert of 2010 (the brand’s YouTube channel total upload views currently sit at 184,542,802!). So can they build upon that success or is this a ‘swan dive’ too far for the brand?

The brand successfully used social media last year to interact with consumers and create a buzz around the campaign. This year they’re trying to adopt similar tactics in the hope that they’ll strike ‘advertising gold’ twice.

On January 20th, Old Spice released a short teaser video on YouTube announcing the Old Spice guy’s come back.

On Friday, in another YouTube video, it was revealed that one lucky ‘Old Spice fan’ would be given access to the new advert before anyone else.

Old Spice plan to email the advert to one carefully chosen person in advance of it’s office TV launch in the States on February 7th, the day after the Super Bowl. It is hoped that this person will then promote the advert on their social network.

So can the advert go from an audience of one, to an audience of millions? Probably, considering that the initial, relatively dull, ‘come back’ video has already got almost 600,000 views in a week.

This will be an interesting one to watch for sure.

Advertising at its Worst?

How does a small mattress company in California rack up over 3 million views of their advert on YouTube? Gary’s Mattress has struck YouTube gold for all the wrong reasons with possibly the most un-P.C advert in history. What to mock first…his poor reading of cue cards, the bad copy or the racist, costume-clad moments?

If you haven’t seen this then it’s definitely worth a watch:

Are You Tough Like Chuck Norris?

The National Rifle Association (NRA) in the States have launched a new advert encouraging people to register to vote in order to protect their right to ‘bear arms’.

The ad is set in a gun lovers group meeting which is chaired by Randy, a tubby, trailor-trash Chuck Norris-wannabe and features some choice individuals including a gun-toting granny who will have to have her gun taken from her ‘cold dead hands’. The real Chuck Norris also makes an appearance and is the honorary Chairman of the ‘Trigger Your Vote‘ campaign.

This video actually looks like a piss-take of an NRA video as all the pro-gun people depicted are hillbillies or dullards…hardly something to inspire a pro-gun lobbying initiative. I’d be asking for my membership money back if I was in the NRA!