I get an email from CertiPost, a daughter company of the Belgacom/Belgian Post, that bears the title “You had an unwanted visitor last night“. When one clicks on the link, one has to give the name of one’s partner, best friend and favourite sport. The result is a somewhat customized movie about a wife who cheats on her husband, or actually, your wife cheating on you.
This obviously is a trial to make a viral video. They’ve made some mistakes though:
- You can only personalize the movie for yourself, you cannot forward a copy personalized for a friend. That would have really made it viral.
- I fail to see why “Your wife is cheating on you” would make the subject want to buy a product/service, expect if it concerns lethal weapons or a private detective.
- The contrast between a movie that is trying to be cheeky and a company that is anything but cheeky - an institution that tries to sell you security services - makes it untrustworthy
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And they even put the boring movie on GarageTV: http://www.garagetv.be/video-galerij/certipost/video5747.aspx
There are a number of things I really don’t get, like e.g. why the “cheating housewife” writes “I left the (bank) papers in the myCertipost” to her secret lover? Spelling a brand name like that in hand writing is plain silly, let alone to do it on something like a post-it note.
And why does the robber keep putting his mask back on all the time?
Why all the sexiness? Do they want to appeal to some kind of secret rape wish of middle-aged house wifes?
But the most incredible thing is we’re all supposed to trust the company that brings us weird movies like this with our money and our secrets :-/
Hello Peter, Joris, Clo,
We’ve produced this viral for Certipost. Is it ok for you if we provide you with some explanations about the ‘what’ and ‘why’ of this movie? We had some common concerns with you about the project, but in the end we went for this. We promise not to give a too dull explanation about everything…
Frank