Kobe – The King of Viral Video

Posted by Russell Scibetti Published in Basketball, Marketing

Kobe Bryant has done it again. Earlier this season, we had “Kobe jumping over an Aston Martin.”

That video has been viewed over 7 million times on YouTube. Then we had “Kobe jumping over a pool of snakes.”

That video went well over 4 million views. Now, we have the latest video of “Kobe selling ankle insurance!”

This video is already over 300,000 views in less than a week. Nike and Kobe have really dedicated a lot of attention to the idea of viral videos and the response has been overwhelming. I think we can expect to see many more brands and athletes use this type of approach to promote their events and products in the near future. Thanks to Darren Rovell of CNBC for pointing out this latest viral campaign.

Are there other examples of viral sports videos that you really liked or that you thought were very effective? Share your thoughts in the comments!

Print This Post

Email This Post

Guerrilla Marketing by Hashtag (May 2nd, 2012)
Updated: Leagues as Team Owners and Operators (December 9th, 2011)
NBA Lockout Timeline in Pictures (November 7th, 2011)
Always Be Communicating (October 12th, 2011)
Denver Nuggets Fan Features (August 29th, 2011)

3 users responded in this post

Subscribe to this post comment rss or trackback url

Jeremy Stinson said on January 21st, 2009 at 11:18 pm

There is nothing better then Terry Tate:

Chris said on January 23rd, 2009 at 10:30 pm

Interesting campaign…although they could have protected themselves with additional/different domain names.

NotMyBrokenAnkles.com was registered on November 14, 2008. Why didn’t Nike spend another $10 or so per domain and register AnkleInsurance.com (already registered), AnkleInsuranceCompany.com (currently available), and AnkleInsuranceCo (currently available)? At the very least they could forward it to NotMyBrokenAnkles.com. Instead, they are likely missing out on quite a few website visitors….

Jackie A. said on January 26th, 2009 at 10:06 pm

As a soccer fan, Nike has had some great viral videos, in the similar vein of the first two Kobe spots…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsO6D1rwrKc – Ronaldinho shoe spot (27,000,000+ views).

The new Kobe spot is awesome, and I love the website which they ties it all together integrating the campaign. They could go as far as they want with it and let users submit their broken ankle videos, set up a “broken ankles tour,” lots of creative potential!