Great Social Media Idea: Winter is Coming

So... everything happened in last night's Game of Thrones season finale. EVERYTHING.

In honor of good old GOT, here's a fun video from out friends down under at the University of Canberra. (FYI - for some reason I couldn't get this video to embed. Been away from blogging for so long that I forgot how, apparently.)

And here's the lovely Laura Haddock, explaining how this video came to be and what it's all about: 

The aim of the content was to poke fun at one of the most common complaints about our town...that it is too cold. We thought we would turn the negative into an opportunity to provide tips in a light-hearted way by playing on the hype around GOT. We had zero budget for this so rather than try and make it look good and fail we hammed up the lack of budget using kids toys, a texta beard, a bedsheet cape and a cheap wig. The whole thing was shot on iPhone.

Love it!

For me, the takeaway from super successful videos like this (it got great engagement and view counts) is that while of course high budget and polished videos always look nice and professional, more often than not it's the scrappy, unpolished, in-the-moment videos that become viral sensations. Sometimes it's OK to do something low-budget and on an iPhone. In fact, sometimes it's way better to do something unpolished than to agonize over every detail of the production quality. As Gertrude Stein famously wrote in 1913 - a fun, engaging video is a fun, engaging video is a fun, engaging video. (Well... she said something in the ballpark of that, anyway.)

Take risks, be spontaneous, and see what happens. Maybe not every time, but at least some of the time. Sometimes audiences appreciate when a video isn't overly slick and buttoned-down. So be like University of Canberra and grab an iPhone and some cheap wigs and let your creative vision become a reality!