Jennifer Aniston doesn’t really have a sex tape, but the original name for her video ad that she made for smartwater was named a sex tape, that’s all. glaceau smartwater has been using Jennifer Aniston as their spokeswoman for some time and the water company has been known to come up with entertaining advertisements for some time now. This new video shows their creativity in getting people’s attention again. The video features a kid lip-syncing a popular song, puppies, babies dancing, double rainbow plug, groin kicks, and cheesy porn music – each element being successful in getting viewer’s attention online lately, all rolled into one satirical video. And then it finishes reminding you about smarrtwater being pure.
This ad’s been getting a lot of negative attention from the internet viewers, saying that the ad isn’t creative and tacky. The claim is that the video doesn’t really have any creativity – all it does is have a celebrity spokeswoman and an attention-grabbing video title. However, how do you define the success of any advertisement, wouldn’t getting attention be deemed successful? Looking at alternate video sensations, aren’t Old Spice, Paul Vasquez (double rainbow guy), and Volkswagen’s Mini Darth Vader successful because of their ability to get your attention?
If we were to look at it in the traditional way of AIDA (attention, interest, desire, action from the university advertising textbooks), this video may be considered a success. It has gained instant attention and interest given its title and has many people searching out the video online to view it to find out what this “Jennifer Aniston sex tape” is all about. On the desire spectrum, this video may fall short because in the entire video only about 30 seconds are spent to tell you what the product is all about (purest tasting water there is). For action, the sales results will measure will show how successful this ad is with sales before and after the video ad.
Another way to look at it, despite negative attention is the overarching goal of advertising. Companies advertise to get your attention and peak your interest in their product, and increase it’s share of mind. The video has shot up internet video ranking charts and has more people aware about the product; not sure about knowledge of the product’s benefits itself, but it has certainly made more people know it’s out there. So if that’s the main goal of advertising, I would say that it’s pretty successful. If smartwater were executing a multiple-phased ad campaign, then this would definitely be phase one where people are made aware of the product itself (and then later phases educating the consumer on the product’s benefits on how pure the water is and how it’s been manufactured).
Only smartwater’s marketing guys can truly tell you if this video has been a success or not, but the video has already gotten 6.5 million youtube views in a little over a week’s time. Not too shabby.
update: Advertising Age says that the Jennifer Aniston video ranks as this week’s top viral video (most unique views). See article and ranking chart here.
BevWire 
I like BevWire’s article about Jen Aniston’s Smart Water Video. A friend of mine that has produced videos for the local TV station he works for, told me once, bad publicity is still publicity. He told me that after I decided to campaign against one country music “star”. After I warned a lot of people to boycott her music, he told me that he didn’t even know who she was until I “warned” him so he checked out her material. If you don’t have anything nice to say then don’t say anything at all…so true. I like Jen’s video and it’s funny. People who didn’t know about Smart Water will soon, although I hope this is part one, as another video with more facts would be even better!
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