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Children’s Medical Research Institute video gains more than 1m views in 72 hours

An online video promoting the work of The Children’s Medical Research Institute (CMRI) has gone viral with 1.4 million views in less than 72 hours.

Created by ad agency March One, the ‘Cure Childhood Diseases’ video, about two women dealing with the effects of childhood diseases, went viral after it was posted on Essential Baby’s Facebook page.

Ben Coverdale, creative director of March One, told Mumbrella: “CMRI had an issue where lots of people knew Jeans for Genes Day, but didn’t know why they were doing it. Essentially, no-one knew what CMRI did. The spot was to raise their profile and say ‘We’re about childhood diseases’. That’s why we went with the online strategy to go viral.”

“It was a bunch of stories that came together. CMRI design the procedures that happen during pregnancy checkups, so having babies is where they touch the average person’s life.”

The video was directed by Ideas of Dean and uses original music recorded by Australian Idol season one finalist Lauren Buckley. Media was handled by Cherry Media. The video has sparked hundreds of comments on Essential Baby’s Facebook post.

“While we were bringing the video together, whenever we told someone about it a bunch of people started to tell their own stories,” Coverdale said.

It’s the most widely shared video March One have produced to date. Coverdale said the trick was using a seeding strategy where prominent Facebook users were asked to share the campaign.

“You can make great content but I now realise that with online strategy you really need that base of support. You can have a great video and still have no-one see it,” he added.

Jack Fisher

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