Interview: Jungle Creations Managing Partner on Viral Marketing

In November, GDI interviewed Yoti, the UK based digital identity app that recently went viral with their ‘Little Casanova’ Facebook ad.

The video, which shows women being tricked into a date by a witty 12-year-old, currently has 17 million views, 60,000 shares, and 250,000 likes on the platform.

Yoti told GDI they were “overwhelmed by the response” to the advertisement, adding “to get over 11 million views in 48 hours is no small feat”.

This week, GDI spoke to the team behind the campaign. Jungle Creations are the 4th most viewed viewed media company in the world, and the curators of VT – the most viewed page on Facebook.

Managing Partner & Creative Director Henry Hitchcox gave his thoughts on Viral Marketing, and told us about Jungle Creations’ plans for 2018.

Read the full interview here:

How has 2017 been for Jungle Creations in general? What have been the best bits?

HH: “It’s been an incredible year for Jungle. We’ve gone from 60 staff breaking into the branded content world, to a team of 150+ across offices in London, New York and LA, producing globally recognised campaigns for the best brands in the world. We’ve built pages for almost every interest group, including food, DIY, fitness, gaming, music, animals, cocktails… the list goes on! Together these channels amassed 5.2 billion video views in November, making us the most viewed media company on Facebook.”

Are you seeing any new trends in viral video marketing?

HH: “Facebook are really pushing long form original content, which is fantastic for us, as it’s exactly the type of work we want to produce. Whilst 10-15 second long videos still have their place, we’re seeing 3-5min+ pieces really being prioritised in the algorithm. I think this shift will continue, especially as Zuckerberg & co roll out ‘Facebook Watch’ in The UK. Our branded content will follow this trend, so don’t be surprised if you see us release 5-10min long films that are sponsored by our clients.”

The Yoti video was the most viewed branded video on Facebook in the week it was released. It was viewed almost 20 million times. What sort of impact can than exposure have on a brand?

HH: “I think there are multiple benefits that come from having a hugely successful viral video like Little Casanova. Not only do you get mass brand awareness, but when you reach viewing numbers like that, it becomes a press story in itself. Once we hit 5-10 million views, we often see The Guardian, The Telegraph, and other huge publishers cover it. For example, our piece for Yoti was instantly picked up by MailOnline, whilst being awarded ‘Pick of The Week’ by Campaign Magazine.

Beyond brand awareness, our campaigns often generate large amounts of clicks to download, purchase, stream etc. For example, our recent video with Universal Music saw their new artist Daecolm get an incredible 37% clickthrough rate to his music streaming pages.

Brands are also able to grow their own social channels when we release content, as we tag their Instagram or Facebook in the post caption. This has resulted in up to 5,000% page growth for clients.

Finally, it’s important not to underestimate the value ‘going viral’ has on day-to-day meetings, presentations, and casual work conversations. Nearly 20 million people have seen Little Casanova, so Yoti will find themselves in countless situations with potential clients and customers who will have seen the video, and been impressed by it – ‘You were the guys that made that hilarious video!’.”

Describe the process of putting together a video like that – how long does it take? What are the different stages?

HH: “Yoti said that they were doing a ton of direct traditional marketing, so they asked us to come up with something more viral that works on social. Once we had this brief, I sat down with the creative team and we developed a bunch of serious hard hitting concepts around identity theft, but realised this perhaps wasn’t the best route to go down for VT (our flagship page). So we transformed the fear of fraud into something far more playful, and the result was Little Casanova.

We auditioned hundreds of kids for the role, but Lewis was the real stand out. He lives in Hull and spends a lot of his time racing pigeons and with men in their 60s, picking up many of their mannerisms along the way. So despite having him on a hidden in-ear audio system, he was far wittier than I’ve ever been on a date, and he ignored pretty much everything I said. On one of the first dates, I remember saying to him, “Tell her you’ve had a few drinks to get your confidence up”, and he just turned to her and said: “I had a couple whiskeys, bit of dutch courage.” From then on in, we just let him run with it.

We were able to get such close shots without the women noticing by using ‘pram cams’ – essentially cameras hidden in baby prams, with the operators just looking like overly attentive parents, who are constantly staring at their children (aka the view finder!)”

What has Jungle Creations got planned for next year? Are there any exciting projects or developments to look out for?

HH: “There’s quite a lot that I can’t talk about, but what I can say is that we’re really looking to push even further into original long form content – our first documentary Slab City was released last month, and it’s already clocked up over 13 million views. This will be a real focus of 2018.

We’ll also be looking to extend our brands out far beyond social. For example, we launched Twisted London last month, which is a delivery only restaurant born out of our hugely popular Twisted food page. The service allows you to watch a video on Twisted’s Facebook page, and then click to have it arrive at your door 30 minutes later via UberEats and Deliveroo. We have plans to do similar extensions for our other brands.

We’ll also be opening more offices around the world and continuing to grow the incredible Jungle Creations team.”