A sure sign that a fun or interesting youtube video clip is actually a viral trying to sell you something, is when people who work in advertising or marketing tell you about it - via facebook, or emails "a friend sent me this..." and now twitter. Thus, when everyone I knew tweeted about that how to hack the video in Times Square with an iPhone last week, I knew it was fishy. I reckon everyone who watched it did.
However, it was also really uninteresting, and apart from rolling my eyes at using the audio-output to hack video, I couldn't be bothered enough searching for clues in the advertising screens to figure out what this really was for, and left it at that.
Now that he's revealed "how he did it", we know it was for Limitless, the movie starring Robert de Niro, Bradley Cooper, Abbie Cornish and a little mundane looking pill that makes you smarter than anyone else. Lets watch the reveal, shall we?
Yes, the reveal is basically a repeat of the original, and if you watch closely when he gets the red balloon, a trailer for Limitless is being shown on the screen he interrupts with his pretend-iphone-video hack. But you'll have to wait all the way to the end of this video to see the payoff, the rest is essentially the same footage as the original. Le yawn.
Alex Billington of @firstshowing summed it up nicely. WTF?! That viral video of guy hacking screens in Time Square was a promo for Limitless?! Viral #FAIL - no one knew!
Hat tip moradpour who calls it "the worst viral marketing of all times". Created by Thinkmodo.com
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