Devil Baby popularizes viral horror movie marketing

Graphic by Clara Ilkka

Graphic by Clara Ilkka

Drew Maiers

In our modern world media is unique, funny and catches the eyes of the viewers. It spreads like a viral disease throughout social networking to the point where anyone anywhere that is connected somehow with the internet is exposed to one of these videos. One of these videos that is raising up in the charts of Youtube is a video called Devil Baby Attack, which features an automated baby in a remote controll stroller scaring citizens of New York City by popping up out of the stroller and screaming. The video itself is just a medium for advertising for Devils Due a horror movie.

Videos like this can be said to be a trailblazer for the medium of viral videos for the purpose of advertising. The video itself got up to 40 million views within two weeks of coming out, and all the views have been constantly promoting the movie. It is projected that this will become an increasingly more common medium for advertising.

Junior Jared Morningstar said, “Oh, absolutely.  The internet is expanding and more and more people are watching videos online and sharing them.  If companies can make a funny commercial and get it to go viral, that’s a great way to expose customers to a product.”

The effectiveness of the video is unquestionable, with views and likes through the roof it is obvious that people tend to have a positive reaction to the video, seeing it as a funny and entertaining thing. Just because the video is paired up with the Devils Due movie does not mean that people are going to be encouraged to go out and see the movie, but the unquestionable raising of popularity and renown of the video still makes it an effective use of advertising.

Sophomore Melissa Jernigan said, “People enjoy funny, and Youtube is a fairly popular site and it seems the video had a fairly positive response so companies will be more obliged to use the same advertising tactics in the future.”

Thinkmodo, the studio that created Devil Baby were aimed more to form an ad that does not seem like an ad, something that someone would watch out of leisure and comedy instead of something forced upon someone to watch before their intended viewing. This strategy of advertising has been mentioned as genius and this will most likely not be the end of it.

Senior Hanna Finnegan said, “ I totally think that people that work in advertising style jobs would start to use viral videos as a form of advertising because it just makes sense to use it. They get tons of views and get their product, or movie out there and spread popularity to the people that view the videos.”

This might be the future, popular viral videos sponsored or created by companies to showcase a product or promote a movie. For Devil Baby it is the present, as it continues to rack views by the thousands as the minutes go by.