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Viral Success Can't Turn Comfort Wipe Into Real Product

What People Watched the Week of June 15, 2009

by Abbey Klaassen
Published: June 25, 2009

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Just because there's a market for your online video doesn't mean there's a market for the product it's hawking, an important lesson illustrated by this week's No. 4-spot debut.

The infomercial for The Comfort Wipe was, er, intriguing enough to garner almost 700,000 non-paid views this past week, according to Visible Measures data, and, yes, it is a real product that helps people reach around to wipe after using the toilet. But Comfort Wipe is in test mode, and its maker, Telebrands (also responsible for other as-seen-on-TV products such as the StickUp Bulb and Doggy Steps), will not be moving forward with it, according to a spokeswoman. There are still units available for purchase via the website, but once they're gone, they're gone.

While it's nearly impossible to beat that story line, there were a couple of other interesting debuts on the chart, including a seven-minute-plus video from DC Shoes. And we're going to go out on a limb here and bet that guys fueled the traffic for Ultimo, which landed in the No. 8 spot with "Test Drive Bras," and tech geeks goosed video traffic for Opera, which landed in the No. 9 spot for its "Unite" campaign, which promotes its new browser technology.

	Last Week	Brand	Campaign	Agency	Current Week Views*	% Change in Views**
1	3	Nike Basketball	Most Valuable Puppets	Wieden & Kennedy	2,481,055	+55%
2	1	Microsoft Xbox	Project Natal	World Famous	1,711,375	-31%
3	NEW	DC Shoes	Ken Block's Gymkhana Two Project	Mad Media	744,980	NEW
4	NEW	Comfort Wipe	Comfort Wipe	Adcomm Advertising	689,064	NEW
5	2	Carl's Jr	How to Eat a Burger (Portobello Mushroom Six Dollar Burger)	Initiative, Mendelsohn Zien	684,026	-59%
6	5	Cadbury	Eyebrow Dance	Fallon	497,796	+47%
7	4	NBA	Where Amazing Happens	Goodby, Silverstein & Partners	458,162	-9%
8	NEW	Alton Towers/Ultimo	Test Drive Bras	fr@nk	385,818	NEW
9	NEW	Opera Software	Unite	In house	309,393	NEW
10	7	T-Mobile	T-Mobile Dance	Saatchi & Saatchi, MediaCom	275,152	+12%
Source: Visible Measures The Visible Measures Top 10 Viral Video Ad Campaigns Chart focuses on brand-driven viral video ads that appear on online-video-sharing destinations. Each campaign is measured on a True Reach™ basis, which includes viewership of both brand-syndicated video clips and viewer-driven social video placements. The data are compiled using the Visible Measures Viral Reach Database, a constantly growing repository of analytic data on more than 100 million internet videos across more than 150 video-sharing destinations. Note: This analysis does not include Visible Measures' paid-placement (i.e., overlays, pre-/mid-/post-roll) performance data or video views on private sites. This chart does not include movie trailers, video-game campaigns, TV show or media network promotions, or public service announcements. View-count results are incremental by week. *Indicates percent change in views compared with the same period the week before. To notify Visible Measures of an upcoming video ad campaign, or for an end-to-end assessment of your campaign's overall performance, please contact Visible Measures directly.

2 Comments

By cmnkisrule | Austin, T June 25, 2009 01:06:34 pm:

I can understand why the video reached the popularity it did. I equate trying to capture such unintentional hilarity with trying to draw like a child. An art director can try and try but they'll never come close to what an actual kid could do.

As a joke I ordered one of these for someone. We've all heard nothing kills a bad product quicker than good advertising right? Their offer is a joke. As a bonus you get a "free" bathtub gripper for an additional $7.99 S&H that you can't opt out of. When you pay they offer to sell you the deluxe version ( what you see in the video and on the website) for an additional $9.99. Bait n switch much? Then, they charge an additional $7.99 for S&H on the comfort wipe. To top it off they say it'll take up to 3-6 weeks to deliver.

It's no wonder their sales are going down the toilet (sorry, couldn't resist).

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By pluckyglen | Austin, TX June 29, 2009 07:41:44 pm:

The Opera ad was done "in house"... no joke. Were they trying to make me hopeful about their new offering or scare the pee out of me? Because it was closer to the latter.

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