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UK media consultant dupes 2.4m randy YouTubers

No 'Hot Girl Sex' for you!

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UK "media consultancy" ST16 has discovered the secret to viral marketing: Hot Girl Sex.

Today, a pr flack tossed us an email explaining that ST16 just won the New York Film Festival's International Gold Award for a "viral film" called Steamy Windows. In just six months, the press release said, the film attracted over 2.4m viewers on YouTube and an extra 65,000 on Kontraband.

"The film was rated 85th most viewed of all time by UK Youtube," the release exclaimed. "Approximately 10,000 young people from Lancashire voluntarily watched the clip. This is approximately 10 per cent of the target audience."

The target audience is young men aged 17 to 25 who "may not pay attention to mainstream drink drive campaigns." As the film begins, you get the impression you're watching an attractive young woman enjoying the, um, company of some unseen young man. "She loved the way...he made her feel," the interstitials read, as the attractive young woman lets out groan after groan.

But by the end of the ad, you realize she's groaning for another reason: She's the victim of a drink driving accident. "Until he killed her," is the final message.

You think that's tasteless? A little net surfing revealed that when posted to YouTube, the film was flagged for containing "inappropriate" content - and it wasn't called Steamy Windows. It was called "Hot Girl Sex in Car".

There's more advice on how to create a viral video here (NSFW). ®

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Latest Comments
Anonymous Coward

Huge penalties for victimless crimes?

It might sound like a good idea to punish drunk-drivers severely even when nobody was hurt, but I'm generally very wary of treating victimless crimes too seriously. For example, it's open to abuse when the police can not be trusted. What would you do if you know you weren't drinking but the police say "Our computer says your blood sample contained such-and-such a level of alcohol so you're going to prison for ten years"?

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El Reg as US style moral guardian

Drunk driving is typically done by the demographic who would respond to that kind of keyword. Disappointing to see El Reg taking some weird American kind of moral stance on advertising?? Whats that all about?

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Addy material

This scenario plays out every parent's worst nightmare. Way too many kids are getting killed in car crashes, and if it takes uber shock value to wake them up, let it be.

Someone hand that filmmaker an Addy!

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