The year 2014 had a slow start with big viral stories. The biggest stories are often lauched earlier, to benefit from the Christmas spirit, and also big events like the Super Bowl and the winter Olympics stole a lot of attention. But not to worry, there are still great stories to tell. This our selection of the biggest stories of January and February 2014.
Devil’s Due movie: Baby attack viral
This viral for the new movie Devil’s Due was very popular in the beginning of 2014. A remote controlled robotic baby was steered around in New York city and scared the living daylights out of a lot of people. This is a common theme in commercials and virals: make something funny or shocking and use hidden cameras to record the reaction of the crowd passing by. The viral was better received (44 million youtube views) than the movie (18% rotten tomatoes).
30 years of mac
30 years ago on the 24th of January the Mac was born. Apple celebrated this millstone with a great campaign: 30 years of Mac. Here you will find a timeline of all the important mac models and what you can do with them. Artist like Moby and others explain what a Mac meant for their work and life. Apple even made a font with all the models in the line-drawn icons. You can download it here.
Willem Bos Was here
Well Willem Bos was everywhere in January. He is a member of the City Coucil of the Dutch town of Zoetermeer and part of the political party D66. He writes about the current news and photoshops his portrait in pictures. This quickly became an internet hit and people where copying him with his own picture. It looked a lot like the internet viral Bert is Evil. When an evil and angry Bert from Sesame Street was photoshoped into the black chapters of our history.
The Super Bowl commercials
The Super Bowl is always huge in February. With a lot of attention to the commercials that are aired in the breaks of the game. All the big brands spend millions on their ad and air time. This year the google search for Super Bowl commercials was twice as big like last year. This commercial of Axe was considered one of the best with a well know theme: Make Love not War. The add of Microsoft about the impact of technology was also well received. Apple made a similar add that didn’t air at the superbowl, and still gained al lot of attention.
#SochiProblems
February was dominated by the Olympics games in Sochi, the pet project of Putin. But when the athletes and journalist arrived they noted some problems. Sochi was not completely ready for all their visitors. So the hash tag #sochiproblems wat born with the most bizar and funny examples. Roads that go nowhere, two toilets in one bathroom, yellow drinking water, unfinished hotels, no WIFI, etc. AirBnB jumped into it with a great guerrilla campaign. When journalist used the hashtag and complain about their hotel room they replied with and AirBnB listing without any problems. Clever to use one of the biggest stories with a simple execution: great content strategy.
The Netflix house of cards 2 War Room
An other big event in february was the release of the complete second season of House of Cards on Netflix. A journalist was present at the moment when they made the show available worldwide. In the war room Netfilx employees where monitoring everything. How many people are watching, the capacity of the servers, social media activity, and a lot more. It shows how seriously the company is focussed on service. House of Cards season 2 was highly anticipated and a seamless viewing experience was crucial. And they where smart enough to invite journalist into the War Room so they could write about the preparation. Not like HBO Go who experienced serious downtime with the start of Game of Thrones season 4. A big win for Netflix, it became one of the biggest stories. Even Yahoo and Microsoft are going into the online viewing battlefield with their announcement of producing their own series.