Engaging Viral Marketing Builds Awareness: Ray-Ban's "Never Hide Films"

One of the small businesses I worked with has a tight budget and wanted to find a way to increase their search engine rank and build awareness about the services they offer. In my opinion, one of the most fun and creative ways to develop a presence on the internet is through viral marketing. One of the more memorable campaigns was Rayban's "Never Hide Films" video series.

Ray-Ban's Never Hide Films produced some low budget, but extremely effective viral marketing videos designed to build awareness of their brand by capitalizing on the internet. You can find an analysis and history of their video production at The Future of Ads.  The great thing about these videos is that they generated a lot of buzz initially over whether or not they were real or fake. The mistake Ray-Ban made was that after being found out, they didn't end their videos with a watermark or company logo.




The videos remind me of the subtleties of product placement and a lot of people were no doubt left with questions of what happened or why these videos were produced in the first place. After the mystique of their origins was dismantled, I think Ray-Ban could have better capitalized on building an association between their brand and the videos.

Either way, I'm sure many of us will have a hard time forgetting Ray-Ban or these videos after watching them.