UK media consultant dupes 2.4m randy YouTubers

UK "media consultancy" ST16 has discovered the secret to viral marketing: Hot Girl Sex. Today, a pr flack tossed us an email explaining that ST16 just won the New York Film Festival's International Gold Award for a "viral film" called Steamy Windows. In just six months, the press release said, the film attracted over 2.4m …

[Symrstar]

Wow.

Now only if it was Paris would I watch. Then I would join the masses and oggle.

[mezla]

And the Reg has learnt this lesson too...

Hence the subtitle containing the phrase "Hot Girl Sex"... and attracting young men... ahem.

[Anonymous Coward]

@mezla

...and let's not forget the ever-present, pouting 'asus girl'

----

man with dark glasses because watching too many drink driving campaigns can make you go blind

[Richard]

Steamy windows?

"'Approximately 10,000 young people from Lancashire voluntarily watched the clip. This is approximately 10 per cent of the target audience.'

The target audience is young men aged 17 to 25..."

I'm a bit confused as to the Lancastrian connection. Do 10% of young men live there? Or is it 10% of young men in a Hot-Girl-Starved area?

Paris, as she is classier than many of those west of the Pennines.

[Fanning the flames that are steaming the windows up]

[Anonymous Coward]

@mezla

Yes, I'm sure that the Reg is struggling to break free of its traditional "octegenarian grandmother" viewership.

[John Lettice]

Re: Steamy windows?

The client was the Lancaster District Alcohol Harm Reduction Partnership, which wanted an anti drink drive campaign covering the local area. Combing the whole of YouTube to hit that target audience does seem a kind of round the houses way of going about things, but presumably they're happy...

[Anton Ivanov]

Well... It passes ASA standards criteria

The advert has been screened on TV and has not been withdrawn due to complaints so I guess tastes differ. They could have used more gruesome footage at the end to properly drive the point through though.

[Anonymous Coward]

Lancashire

It pops up in the "related" box for quite a lot of Lancashire-themed videos (try "Burnley redemption" for starters).

[Anonymous Coward]

@Peter

I think you're missing the same point as the legislature on this one:

The crime is not hitting someone, it's driving drunk in the first place.

As soon as you start the engine while drunk, you should face the same penalties as if you'd run over someone, because when you're incapable of properly controlling a car, hitting someone is not a volitional act or an additional act of negligence. The *only* volitional action, the *only* negligent action, was starting the car.

So one (heavy) penalty for all drink-drivers.

[Lloyd]

It's all wrong

They need to bring back 70's style public service announcements, the one's that scared the cr@p out of us as kids, or more Dennis Leary singing "he's an @sshole".

[Graham Bartlett]

Lancashire connection

I'm from Lancashire. And yes, I'm in a position to report that there are significantly less attractive girls up there. And the ones who are, they mostly stop being attractive the moment they start talking.

The one exception is Lancaster Uni - when we visited as part of our school's "find out where you want to go to uni" thing, it seemed to be the Hot Girl Concentrator for the whole of the north-west. Us lads appreciated this but weren't overly affected, but I swear they can't have needed to wash the floors for a month with our German teacher's tongue dragging on the ground. ;-)

The Billy G icon for no reason except that I like the idea of him hula-hooping with his head...

[Stephen McLeod Blythe]

Re: Lancashire connection

Graham - in these situations, we north of the border employ the "gaffa tape" method.

[Dr Patrick J R Harkin]

@Anonymous coward

"So one (heavy) penalty for all drink-drivers."

Agreed. If two drunk drivers each lose control and plough into a bus stop, the one who does it 2 minutes after the bus has gone gets done for drunk driving, the one who does it 2 minutes before gets done for causing death by dangerous driving, whereas the difference between them is only luck.

Abd it doesn't seem fair that the quality of care available at the local hospital can affect a jail sentence!

[Andy S]

Government meaning of the word voluntary.

"'Approximately 10,000 young people from Lancashire voluntarily watched the clip."

10,000 young people voluntarily tried to watch a completely different clip (ie porn), but got this advert instead. There is a subtle difference.

Although, anyone who has to rely on youtube to find porn on the net, really isn't trying hard enough

[Pascal Monett]

The crime is not . .

So time for the fill-in-blanks exercise :

The crime is not ...., it's .... in the first place.

Here's my version : the crime is not gunning someone down, it's having a gun in the first place.

Your turn.

[Anonymous Coward]

Pascal Monett

"The crime is not gunning someone down, it's having a gun in the first place."

Is not the same. In the car instance the above would be:

The crime is not killing someone whilst driving drunk, it's having a car in the first place.

I could quite legally own a firearm, or a car, and never commit a crime with them.

However, being under the influence with either one would leave me rather more prone to an accident, be it crashing, or a negligent discharge.

[Mark Hartman]

Addy material

This scenario plays out every parent's worst nightmare. Way too many kids are getting killed in car crashes, and if it takes uber shock value to wake them up, let it be.

Someone hand that filmmaker an Addy!

[David Gjester]

El Reg as US style moral guardian

Drunk driving is typically done by the demographic who would respond to that kind of keyword. Disappointing to see El Reg taking some weird American kind of moral stance on advertising?? Whats that all about?

[Anonymous Coward]

Huge penalties for victimless crimes?

It might sound like a good idea to punish drunk-drivers severely even when nobody was hurt, but I'm generally very wary of treating victimless crimes too seriously. For example, it's open to abuse when the police can not be trusted. What would you do if you know you weren't drinking but the police say "Our computer says your blood sample contained such-and-such a level of alcohol so you're going to prison for ten years"?