I saw this video a few days ago and thought to myself "cool, I sorta like Guitar Hero (although I like Rock Band better)." Looks like my ad-dar wasn't on full power, because I failed to detect that it was an ad! An amazing ad. Kudos, once again, to the dudes at Droga 5. Roll tape:

MTV/Activision and Droga 5 played this one perfectly. They created the spot knowing that people would discover its pedigree pretty quickly (they made it obvious enough to do so), but they also made it difficult enough to provide pleasure in the discovery. In just a couple of days, the video has been seen by almost 1,000,000 people. For very little money, Guitar Hero World Tour (a more direct competitor to Rock Band) has given itself a ton of juice.

I think it's interesting to note the extreme buzz created by this little, interesting spot in comparison with the buzz created by the Kobe Bryant et al and Heidi Klum extravaganzas. Those two vids have been viewed a combined 1.5 million times on YouTube in weeks rather than days. Of course, they both ran on TV, too, but we all know how effective TV spots are these days, especially among the video game-playing set. And how much did one cost vs. the other? Impossible for me to say from where I'm sitting. But I think we're talking 5 to low 6 digits vs. solid 7 digits. Argh, age of advertising, can't you get anything right?