Apparently, the streets of San Francisco create the urge to let balls, balloons, and other round objects roll down on them. The first one to do this was of course Sony, with their Bravia campaign, in which hundreds of colorful bouncing balls filled the city. Lego also managed to get together a bunch of harmless fanatics that recreated a scene from Indiana Jones with a boulder constructed out of 5 million Lego pieces.
Now Ray-Ban has used the streets of San Francisco as a scene for their latest viral spot. This time it doesn’t feature a cow or a chameleon, but a giant red ball of yarn with at least 3 meters in diameter. At the end of the spot, we see a person inside the ball, of course wearing a pair of Ray-Bans.
It is just unfortunate that the video is so obviously a fake and does not fool for a moment. This is a pity because the idea was really good. I think it would have been better to do just a small part of the video in reality, eliciting an “am I dreaming?” reaction from viewers. The blogosphere does also highlight that the spot resembles a lot of the previously mentioned spots, which weakens the concept significantly.
Nevertheless, the spirit transmitted through the spot is still fun, and is in line with the company’s long term viral strategy, “Never Hide” (for which there is even a Facebook fan page). The last spot to date was the one with a chameleon for the “Colorize” campaign.
Ray Ban’s is an FR yarn where we can get organic cotton. Thank you.