Teenagers have sex shock!

There is (sorry was) a viral ad on YouTube purportedly produced for JC Penney (a US dept store) by their agency Saatchis, showing 2 teenagers practising quick undressing and dressing in their respective bedrooms apparently in preparation to “watch TV in the basement” while the girls mother is upstairs - see article - that has caused uproar in the US as it apparently condones teenagers having sex. Last week the viral won a bronze at Cannes and JC Penney have absolutely denied any involvement in the ad and have pulled it from You Tube and ambitiously are trying to pull it from “the web”. This follows a spate of similarly supposed “no Client involvement” virals including the VW suicide bomber viral and “sneaky” virals such as Gatorade and BMW’s mockumentary as well as some great ideas such as Draft FCB’s for Sporting Portugal.

All it took for some campaigns to go wildly viral was great content that has been passed around beacuse it was funny, clever or sarcastic and the most successful are often risky (see JC Penney!). But being truly interesting requires risks and in order to reamin true to the channel Clients needs to take risks to achieve true virality.