Darth Vader Can't Gymkhana

This week we've been celebrating the Top 20 Global Social Video Ads of 2011, and while Volkswagen's The Force has undoubtely been the phenomenon of the year, there is another which vies for the crown and which has not benefitted from the full-on promotional boost of the NFL Super Bowl.

DC Shoes' Gymkhana 4 was the runner-up in this year's chart, However, unlike Volkswagen's Super Bowl ad, which was released back in February, Gymkhana 4 has only been out for just 3 months.

In fact, if we look behind the chart ratings, another story emerges.

Volkswagen (below) stole a march on other brands this year when it released its Super Bowl TV commercial a week before the event - it was launched online into the pre-event vacuum that's become something of a spectacle in itself as viewers choose to watch the ads usually because of their innovation or distinctive sense of humour.

With a 30-second TV ad spot costing around $3 million, brands compete as hard as the players on the field to score that winning hit, and with more than 100 million eyeballs to seduce, the prize for success can be huge. 

Even before the event had begun, Volkswagen had a hit on its hands, but if that wasn't enough to secure the ad's position at the top of the 2011 charts, then the intervention of Greenpeace in June sent it well on its way.

In a parody campaign of their own, Greenpeace launched "Volkswagen - The Dark Side", in which they urged viewers to "join the rebellion" against the German car maker.  

Volkswagen became Greenpeace's poster child for corporate anti-environmentalism when it refused to sign a legal framework for CO2 emissions, so with Yoda and plenty of Jedi mind tricks at their disposal the pro-environment organisation set out to turn Volkswagen's Force against themselves.

Altogether 476,000 people joined the Greenpeace rebellion, generating well over 1 million views for their own video campaign, but, unsurprisingly, it proved to be a great acquisition tool for Volkswagen as people logged in to find out what all the fuss was about.

So, that just goes to show how impactful DC Shoes' Gymkhana 4 has been.  Despite the absence of a Super Bowl TV promotion and the attention of the largest environmental campaign group in the world, the (relatively small) shoe and sports apparel company from California, using its own in-house production team, managed to deliver what may still prove to be the most successful branded video of all time.

While Volkswagen’s ad has been viewed 46 million times and shared socially an incredible 4.71 million times, Gymkhana 4 has so far received 12.9 million views and been shared  nearly 2.1 million times. 

That's a share/view rate of 16.3% compared to 10.2% for the pocket-sized Vader meme. 

Last year’s Gymkhana 3, which soared to 43 million views and became the 2^nd most successful branded video ad of all time, was shared socially just 2.7 million times, achieving a share/view rate of 6.3%, so perhaps the Viral Video Chart’s top global ads should be reordered to show 1. Gymkhana 4, 2. Volkswagen’s The Force and 3. Gymkhana. 

Either way, it’s an incredible achievement by DC Shoes and something every brand should try to learn from.

"This is really exciting for DC", said Jeff Taylor, VP of Marketing. "We knew Gymkhana FOUR was going to surpass the previous videos in the series, but to make top-5 of all time is epic.  Our team is extremely proud of this considering all creative direction and marketing for GYM4 was done by Ken Block and our internal team. Thanks go out to all our DC fans for making this video one of the best of 2011!"

Earlier this week, I spoke with Ken Block, Chief Brand Officer of DC Shoes and the man behind the wheel performing all those incredible stunts you see in the video.  

Like all great viral successes, Gymkhana was an accident, but one which the DC Shoes team quickly learned from and shaped into a formula that has delivered 4 (yes FOUR) successive hits and making it the most successful viral series of all time. 

The original Gymkhana video has clocked up 22.2 million views, Gymkhana 2 (aka, The Infomercial in 2 parts) brought in 40 million views, whilst Gymkhana 3 (also in 2 parts) has seen 43.5 million views.   Gymkhana 4, with 12.9 million views in the first 3 months, is set to top the series on its way to another 40 million total views, so that's heading for 150 million views for a series of promotional videos that began just 3 years ago. 

See what I mean about being the most successful viral series of all time?

I asked Ken what effect Gymkhana, as a series from, has had on the DC Shoes brand. 

He said, "DC Shoes has always been a skateboard brand and skateboarding is more of a lifestyle experience, whereas motorsport is kind of the flipside of that and is all about racing in competitions.

"So basically I took all my experience from skateboarding and snowboarding and just applied that to doing something different and unique with motorsport. So as far as DC is concerned, we’ve been very happy with the global exposure and it’s definitely helped increase sales and increased the awareness of DC Shoes to people outside of our core markets.

"DC has always spent the bulk of its marketing dollars selling product to the core skateboarders, snowboarders and surfers, but we needed a way to reach people who shop in the larger mall chains.  If a guy does a kick-flip down 25 stairs, does the consumer really know that it’s harder than 10 stairs? Whereas most people have been in cars and can relate to it and figure that what I do is not so easy.  That's why Gymkhana has been such an incredible marketing machine for us."

However, Block accepts that eventually the music will have to stop.

He said: "I’m just very lucky that so many people enjoy what I do with the car, but there’s only so many tricks I can perform before people will get bored of it.  In the meantime, I’m going to enjoy it, appreciate it and keep doing it as long as I can."

That's an ominous statement for DC Shoes competitors such as Nike, Vans and even car manufacturers such as Volkswagen. While Block continues to hoon, the limelight stays away from bigger brands with considerably larger marketing budgets. 

In Ken's own words, "I'm a lucky bastard", which I suspect his competitors would wholeheartedly agree, but perhaps with greater emphasis on the "bastard".

If you'd like to read the full interview with Ken Block, then visit SkiddMark and take a look at the article "The Accidental Hero - An Interview with Ken Block".