Slate's Bizbox
ad report card: Advertising deconstructed.

Look Who's LaughingGiggling babies have taken over YouTube. Next stop: Madison Avenue.

By Janelle Nanos
Posted Monday, Dec. 31, 2007, at 7:40 AM ET

(Continued from page 1)

Taking a page from BMW, the current Sears "Don't just give a gift, grant a wish" campaign also features home-video footage of people opening presents. Instead of using YouTube, though, Sears collected its video clips from staff members of Sears and its marketing firm, Y&R. The ads strive for a touching authenticity. But the footage is utterly unremarkable, so the spots are lame. In collecting its clips, Sears failed to absorb the first lesson of YouTube: Amateur videos are usually very, very boring. The mere fact that a clip wasn't professionally shot doesn't make it worth including in a commercial.

In the worst instances, found-video ads don't even bother to sync the footage with the product being sold. In 2005, Vonage ran a series of ads that used videos of a kid smashing a baseball bat through a glass door and a man falling off a treadmill (set to that insanely catchy "Woo Hoo" song). The clips were pulled from America's Funniest Home Videos, not YouTube, but they served to give the ads a homemade vibe. Unfortunately, thanks to the combined effect of that distracting soundtrack (now stuck in my head, again) and the bizarre footage, it was impossible to comprehend what exactly was being sold.

But the laughing-baby ads are different. For one thing, the ad executives behind this campaign co-opted an entire YouTube genre, not a particular, beloved clip, thus minimizing the chances of backlash. More than 35 million viewers have seen "Hahaha," a video that features a baby sitting in a high chair, chuckling like crazy. But click on it and dozens of other laughing-baby clips will appear alongside it, each with several million views.

For another, the ads build on the laughing-baby footage to make a point, instead of just hitching a tagline to a YouTube classic. AIG targeted its "plus campaign" at thirtysomethings who are starting to think about retirement but are inundated with confusing messages about growing older, says Charlie Armstrong, AIG's senior director of advertising. On one hand, people reaching middle age see an endless stream of research showing that activities like drinking red wine, dancing, or petting cats can extend their lives. All well and good, until they begin to worry that living longer means they'll eventually outlive their savings and have to sell off that vintage Bordeaux, cancel the samba lessons, and resort to eating cat food—or worse, their cat—in order to get by.

So, how do the laughing babies factor in? AIG decided it wanted to be the company that was OK with clients living longer—so much so, in fact, that they'd tell them how to go about it. After pulling together research about laughter and longevity, they needed a way to present it. But they struggled to find an interpretation that worked on a visceral level, Armstrong said. That is, until someone on the team saw the laughing-baby videos on YouTube.

"When this idea emerged, it was clear we couldn't re-create those moments," Armstrong says. "Even if we had Ridley Scott in a room behind a camera, it wouldn't have been the same belly laugh and unbridled joy. So YouTube was a good solution for us to source the ads."

I asked Armstrong whether resorting to video found at the top of the YouTube charts wasn't a little, well, easy. "There's plenty of ads out there that use found video to create a moment," he said. "But sometimes advertisers don't do such a good job of bringing it home."

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Janelle Nanos is an editor at National Geographic Traveler, where she edits the Intelligent Travel blog. She lives and writes in Washington, D.C.
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