The past year's most viral ads were shocking, scary, or hilarious, but they all triggered a strong enough emotional response to inspire the viewer to share them with friends.
Video technology company Unruly just released a list of the most shared ads of 2013, based not upon views, but by how many times someone shared a link on
5. Cornetto, "Yalin": 2.91 million shares
There's a good chance you actually never saw this Turkish ad, a tale of teenage romance for Unilever's Cornetto ice cream brand Cornetto. Its popularity is based on its universal tale, and the catchiness of Turkish pop singer Yalin's song. RSA produced the short film:
4. Kmart, "Ship My Pants": 3.05 million shares
Draftfcb retained Kmart as a client largely due to the success of this commercial, based on a simple pun repeated over and over. People couldn't get enough of hearing an almost explicit phrase on their televisions and computer screens:
3. Evian, "Baby and Me": 3.32 million shares
Evian's ads have regularly featured babies since the brand launched in 1935, and agency BETC brought them back this year. They cast babies that strongly resembled the adult actors they had recruited to make the ad's visual trick work. Beautiful babies with CGI dance moves? Instant classic:
2. Geico, "Hump Day": 4.03 million shares
The beauty of this ad from The Martin Agency is that its shareability is built into it: it's an ad about Hump Day meant for Hump Day. About 67 percent of the ad's shares fell on Wednesdays throughout the year. Here's the annoying camel that got millions of tired workers through the week:
1. Dove, "Real Beauty Sketches": 4.24 million shares
Ogilvy & Mather's ad for Dove became a viral sensation because it addressed women insecure about their looks and gave them hope through a social experiment. A forensic artist created sketches based on a woman's self-perception and another person's perception of them. The results showed that the subjects were all being much too hard on themselves: