Dubai, UAE:

BETC and evian’s ‘Rollerbabies’ film on YouTube has today scooped an official Guinness World Record for the most viewed online ad of all time. As of today, the ad launched exclusively on YouTube has received over 45 million views worldwide on the popular video sharing website.

Evian Rollerbabies is ‘The most viewed viewed online advertisement which has been watched 45,166,109 times through online websites adverts as of 9 November 2009’, certified by Guinness World Record.

To measure the brand awareness impact of the campaign, Nielsen and YouTube also conducted some joint research which proved that evian’s innovative ‘Roller Babies’ ad campaign on YouTube has had a massive worldwide viral impact, positively impacting the evian brand and helping to deliver additional reach beyond traditional media.

Key findings of the research:
• Branding research conducted by Nielsen in France of internet users shows that there has been a demonstrable effect on the evian brand with a significant increase in top of mind, purchase consideration and image dimensions;
• Over 80% that saw it in France and in the US considered discussing it and two thirds wanted to share it with friends which partly explains the viral phenomenon;
• In France, evian launched a TV ad the day after the YouTube Homepage ad had been broadcast. Five days after the campaign was launched on TV, Nielsen research found that 95% of those who viewed the ‘Rollerbabies’ ad on YouTube had not also seen the ad on TV. This highlights the additional viral effect of launching the campaign on YouTube as well as on TV.
• Using YouTube Insights, evian discovered that the official French version of the online video ad received over 60% of its views from outside France proving the worldwide viral strengh of the original homepage video ads.

Michael Aidan, evian Global Brand Director, said:

“Our ambition with ‘Rollerbabies’ was to create and launch our first ever global campaign. The combination of community management and posting the film worldwide on YouTube has helped us reach well beyond our expectations: the most viewed video ad on the web ever, and the #1 video over the launch month in countries like the US, Russia or Japan where the infamous ‘evian babies ‘ of 1998 were not previously known. Even more spectacular is the spontaneous relay TV channels around the world gave to this “web sensation” and the 350 equally spontaneous remixed versions of the spot that have now reached millions.”

Gianni Pulli, Industry leader FMGC Google, France, said:

“As well as creating an innovative ad, BETC and evian decided to implement an innovative advertising strategy of launching their ‘Rollerbabies’ campaign on YouTube. This Guinness World Record as well as these research results are a powerful reminder of the value YouTube can provide, the branding impact it can have and the additional reach it can secure for creative agencies and advertisers.”

Rémi Babinet of BETC, the creative agency behind the innovative ‘Rollerbabies’ video ad said:

« It’s very important for a big agency to propose quality creative that can equally spark off a popular response. The evian campaign has succeeded in proving that creativity can at the same time be very qualitative and very universal.
In a climate of crisis and general gloom this advert shows that it can play the role of a positive spur in a depressed climate. »

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