Barry Digital Radio

We had given up on Chatroulette. It seemed like a place exclusively for drunk American college kids and guys who wanted to broadcast themselves beating their cocks like it owed them money. Then, on March 15 2011, we found a YouTube video that singly handily raised the bar for how to romance a girl.

Chatroulette Love Song received over 500,000 views on YouTube in the 30 hours after it was posted. It was no accident.

Rune Iversen (28) and Jeppe Vejs (27) are the Danish guys behind the video and we interrupted the Chelsea v FC Copenhagen game to chat to Rune about their viral hit.

The Idea

Every story about how a viral video comes about is different, most of them are completely by accident. Chatroulette Love Song is the exception to the rule.

Rune explains, “I had recently written my viral video thesis and I decided that I wanted to see if I could do what I claimed was possible in my thesis.”

“I came up with the idea of a love story between two strangers online and I contacted my friend Jeppe and we wrote the song together”

Hear more about how the idea came about below.

Preparing For The Shoot

Think this video was easy to shoot? Try making a video, live, on a webcam, in one shot, with 8 people on screen, moving between 3 rooms, singing a song and integrating the name and image of a random girl into the video that you found out 3 seconds before you started.

Most cinematographers won’t go near one shot scenes. They’re hard and they’re time consuming. A group of amateurs attempting a video like this is almost unthinkable.

“We prepared it for two and a half months” reveals Rune, “There was a lot of effort put into giving each participant as little to do as possible but still completing their tasks”

To complicate things, the star of the video, Mess, couldn’t see Diana, his future wife during the shoot.

“Mess never saw Diana” states Rune, “he looked at a tiny webcam with a microphone taped to it. He saw her briefly at the start but that’s it. He had a lot of work to do”

Not bad for a group of uni students!

Hear exactly how the boys prepped the shoot.

The Secret To Making A Video Viral

The exact formula Rune has come up with in his Master’s thesis is complicated. If it works, and it looks like it does, it’s worth its weight in gold.

Rune gives the advice, “make something that gives people a story that they feel. Make people happy, make sure your content is good.”

In the case of Chatroulette Love Song, he reveals that he and Jeppe wrote “a song that people might remember, we tried to find a cute guy and a cute girl and we tried to put stuff in the video so it might be good on repeat viewings as well.”

Little things like Diana’s name being on a place card in the video make you want to watch it again and again to find all the little details that you miss on first viewing.

The final key component of a successful viral video is that it must be genuine.

“Every bit of it is real” notes Rune, “we were on Chatroulette and she came up randomly, after having filmed for about 10 minutes, and we had choreographed it meticulously and we just played the song for her.”

Hear Rune’s full guide to making a successful viral video.

Jeppe (left) and Rune (right) celebrate getting 100,000 views on YouTube.

Getting The Video Out There

Marketing departments worldwide spend a lot of time working on seeding strategies. Why do they often fail where a couple of 20 something uni students succeeded?

“We had a seeding strategy” explains Rune, “and we followed it and it worked well but our goal was 10,000 views in 2 weeks, 100,000 views in 2 months and we failed miserably”

“I’m active on a website called www.reddit.com and I really like that website, I really like what they do on that site. So I knew I wanted to get their attention and if they liked it, other people would like it as well.”

According to Rune, timing is everything, “We started by making sure that that when we uploaded it, it would be around the time that offices opened in America. When people sat down who had office jobs, might check Reddit and perhaps vote it up.”

Targeting and celebrating a particular community, such as Reddit was firmly on Jeppe and Rune’s mind.

“We put the Reddit logo in the background on the wall so they might know that we actually had them in mind when putting the video out”

“We just hoped that we could home in on who is actually watching this and we would focus our efforts on that particular group. That never happened because suddenly it was just everywhere. It’s amazing, it’s not our video anymore, it’s everybody’s”

Hear the full rundown on how the video was seeded.

Can Business Make Viral Videos?

There are plenty of people making viral hits out of their bedrooms. There are barely any sitting in corporate offices achieving the same success.

Is it possible for a business to create a successful viral video? Rune firmly thinks they can but they should tread carefully.

Rune advises viral marketing hopefuls, “Don’t deceive people. Don’t make it out to be something that it’s not. Look at the amazing Old Spice videos, it’s not false, they’re really trying to give you the viewer something that makes you go wow.”

Rune continues, “The best viral videos, even the best branded viral videos, just want to give you an experience, an experience you want to share and not necessarily come away with [the feeling] oh I need to buy a car.”

Hear more of Rune’s thoughts on creating a successful viral video as part of a marketing campaign.

The Future

Rune and Jeppe have been getting a lot of attention since Chatroulette Love Song went live.

How are they going to capitalise on their newfound fame? Rune surprisingly says, “we’re not going to capitalise on it, we’re making a video to make people smile. We might become a YouTube partner where people can click on a commercial on the site. We might record the song and make it available for download but we don’t want to make money off of it.”

Why? “There are just so many horrible things going on with the news” responds Rune “the fact that we know that we’ve made, so far, half a million people smile is all we need.”

After proving that he’s got what it takes, will Rune kick start his career in creating viral marketing campaigns? “Hopefully” says Rune “it’s my passion, it’s what I’m dreaming of doing. At the moment I’m unemployed and I’m enjoying being at home with my little son and girlfriend. I want to work with it but the family life is really appealing too.”

Follow the guys on:
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