A clear win for Kohl’s
I finally watched it. I had seen it shared over and over again on Facebook, but just never felt compelled to click.
When I finally clicked to watch this viral video starring “such a happy Chewbacca,” the view count was at more than 109 MILLION. Plus my view, of course. This morning, the view count has gone over 127 million. Wow.
If you haven’t done so yet, go ahead and take four minutes of your day to watch Candace Payne sit in her car with a Chewbacca mask that she just picked up from Kohl’s. If you don’t laugh along with her at least once, we can no longer be friends.
Bottle that up!
I’ve been writing content for the internet since about 1995. And still to this day, I have to stop myself from rolling my eyes when a marketing director instructs his or her team to create a viral video. That’s like telling your team to carve a chunk of cheese out of the moon for you. Pretty much an impossible request. Marketing teams don’t make viral videos; people like Candace do.
Linda, honey, listen: Viral videos all have one huge thing in common – they’re simple. The little girl on the stairs encouraging her parents to stop fighting. The little boy who just wants cupcakes for dinner. Candace in her car with a Chewbacca mask. A marketing team would only overthink and over-engineer and over-produce something like that.
…but is it real??
But, having said that, there is a tiny part of me that kinda hopes that Kohl’s is behind this whole thing. Did someone finally come up with the formula for a viral video?
Did a company remove their ego – and their branding and their logo and all the production costs – to just allow the video to do its thing?
How many times has Kohl’s been mentioned over the last week or so in blog posts and tweets and status updates? They have to be loving this. Heck, the masks can’t be found anywhere from what I’m reading online!
Marketing and view counts aside, take a moment to watch the video. Use four minutes of your day to step away from political debates with friends. Watch a happy woman and a happy Chewbacca and just laugh for a moment. I think that’s what the internet was made for to begin with.
