SkiddPlayer Viral Video Chart - 918 RSR, Banned Dacia ad, Volvo does a Nigella and Aston's Rapide razzie

It’s been a great week for automotive videos as we settle in to the pace of 2011. Ideally we’d limit this to a Top 10 listing, but there are just too many interesting videos to choose from, so rather than produce a chart listing this time around we’ve picked out a few of our favourites, plus those we suggest you keep an eye on.

As you will see from this week’s selection, there’s more to a great video than the quality of the filming or the budget that’s thrown at it. As with most activities where customer satisfaction is at the core, it’s all about exceeding expectations. The bigger the budget (or more exotic the car being featured) the more an audience is likely to expect in terms of thrills or entertainment. Also, it’s really tough to impress the oh-so cynical automotive enthusiast, but often a little humility goes a long way and sometimes less (smugness) results in considerably better (i.e. positive) response.

Let’s take a look.

Top Performers

In this category we’re looking at videos with either the highest number of views or social shares (via Facebook or Twitter) during the week, basically those that have caught your interest most consistently each day.

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Volvo V60: How To Make A Sexy Car Ad

It’s the ‘Nigella’ style advert of the week, appealing for it’s visual quality, music score and the almost sensual feeling it provokes (oh, was that just me then? Oops..). Volvo continue to strive towards changing people’s attitudes towards their brand and this V60 ad is perhaps their most successful yet.

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Porsche 918 RSR revealed in Detroit

Launched earlier this week in Detroit, Porsche created several videos to tease and then inform us about its new 918 RSR. Stunning. To quote a modified version of that famous Jerry Maguire quote, You had us at “The new P..”.

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Banned advert – Dacia: Romanian bargain

There’s so much to laugh about in this Dutch advert, that you’ve just got to watch it. More than 200,000 people already have since Monday. The ad centres on an elderly couple who start to haggle with a sleazy car salesman to buy a new Romanian-built Dacia Duster, trading insults and profanities until you’re sure the sale must be lost. But no, this is precisely how you buy such a disgusting bargain.

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VW Academy with Bill Hader: 2011 Jetta Competitive Advantage

Saturday Night Live comedian Bill Hader and Volkswagen Product Specialist Danielle Gumro discuss the 2011 Jetta and other VeeDubs in this hilarious new educational series, “Inside the VW Academy.” Forget the idea of these being ‘educational’, they’re just laugh-out-loud funny and have clocked up the highest viewing figures for any automotive campaign this week.

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Making of Mercedes-Benz ‘Sunday Driver’ commercial with Michael Schumacher and Mika Häkkinen

A behind-the-scenes look at the Christmas advert, ‘Sunday Driver’, which featured Michael Schumacher, Mika Hakkinen and German football legend Franz Beckenbauer. There were two versions of the ad filmed, one in English and the other in German, each with subtle differences including the music and the driver of the G Wagon (Franz Beckenbauer in the German version). It’s a thoroughly slick and enjoyable ad that’s already clocked up nearly 1 million views since it was released just 3 weeks ago.

Keep an eye on these

We expect these videos to either clock up a decent level of views or generate discussion for all the right or wrong reasons. They say ‘..all publicity is good publicity’, but we’ll have to see if that proves true for some of the following brands.

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Part 1. Aston Martin Rapide. True Power Should Be Shared

We will produce a proper review of this new series next week, but the response from audiences thus far should already be giving the folks at Aston a few sleepless nights. It’s disappointing to see the same basic mistakes being made that we identified in our review of Audi’s 6-part series, “The next big thing” featuring Justin Timberlake last year.

Take a look for yourself and make up your own mind – most people associate Aston Martin with the iconic Bond 007 films, so unless you’re going to match these and put Daniel Craig in the lead role, then just don’t go there.

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Mercedes-Benz CLS TV-Spot: Escaped to the mountains (full length)

Here’s one for the “what the hell were they thinking?” category. Mercedes new CLS is a lovely looking thing and this video is beautifully shot and edited, but what a stupid story-line! The film is about a guy who’s opted out of life and now lives in the mountains but one day he sees a CLS drive past and says, “I thought I would never go back, and then I did.” Oh dear…

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Lexus LS: Chain (Behind the Scenes)

The latest commercial from Lexus to show how taking the hard way inspires absolute confidence – so they strap 5 Lexus LS together and then park a LFA underneath them. Why? Well you’ll have to watch the video and see.

Worth a look

1. Famous and Fearless – Behind the Scenes with Driftworks
A behind the scenes look at Chris Evans’ Famous and Fearless show on Channel 4 which was won by Charley Boorman.

2. HUMAN SIDE OF RACING – Dubai
An excellent documentary by ClashProduction asking amateur and professional racing drivers, “What does racing mean to you?”

3. Pagani C9 – 2nd Teaser
It looks like Pagani’s successor to the Zonda will be called ‘Huayra’, but we still don’t know what it will look like and this second teaser doesn’t help..! [Edit – as this article was published, Pagani released a 3rd teaser. It still doesn’t help…]

4. BMW M1 Hommage (German)
It may be in German, but it still contains a great collection of clips as Motor Vision brings together the classic and modern, introducing us to the BMW M1 and BMW M1 Homage concept car.

5. Audi Commercial – Truth In Blacklist
Following on in the theme of great motorsport videos, it may have slipped your attention that Audi are celebrating 30 years of Quattro in 2011 and this week released a great collection of videos from their archives including this one.

The title “Truth in Blacklist” refers to Audi being the winner of 99 races in five years; winner of 58 races in a single season; Winner in 21 countries across 5 continents; Holder of 3 world records at Pikes Peak – and then after two decades of owning the winner’s circle, the governing body of Motorsport banned quattro from further competition. Enough said.

Seems like a great way to end this week’s video chart, hopefully you’ll find something you like amongst them and look out for more of the same next week.

Sources: these videos charts were compiled using data from SkiddPlayer, and also take into account the views, shares and referrals across Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Vimeo.