Gillette, Not the Best Ads a Man Can Get

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Cynicism runs amok among our hallowed list this week. And the biggest culprit of that kind of audience distrust is none other than Gillette. The razor maker owns the top spot with last week's debut video, "Perfect Length," as well as this week's No. 5 slot, newcomer "Young Guns," which drew over 3.7 million views combined. The new video uses as its central gimmick the mullet, which became a satirical flash point some two decades ago. Agency BBDO is thereby responsible for both being behind the times and unimaginative. But Gillette is still the bigger perpetrator for paying money to have these spots produced and then approving them and sending them off into the wilds of the internet to propagate such lifeless, uninspired fare. What else? Oh, yes, the body wash Lynx debuted this week at No. 7, with a video featuring British actress and lad mag regular Jessica Jane Clement, whose presence seems to be the only reason for the video in the first place. The rest of the spot is elliptical and nonsensical. In a word, irrelevant. The rest of our list shows the usual suspects from recent weeks, and Nike's "Write the Future" actually ascended into second place from fourth last week. The World Cup continues its reign. But we will leave you with a link to what in our opinion is perhaps one of the most inspired pieces of satirical magic we've seen in many, many a week. Novelist Gary Shteyngart reaches out to the web with a bit of video brilliance for his forthcoming book "Super Sad True Love Story" out on July 27 from Random House. In it, Mr. Shteyngart, who was recently named to New Yorker magazine's "20 Under 40" list, mocks the marketing process as well as the supposed staples of the literary scene, namely the cocktail party. Jay McInerney, Mary Gaitskill and James Franco make appearances, but it's Mr. Shteyngart who shines. *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.

Gillette, Not the Best Ads a Man Can Get

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