Our competition has closed

Thank-you to everyone who entered and supported our Go Viral competition in association with IdeasTap. The deadline has passed and we are now reviewing entries. Watch this space for further announcements!

In the mean time, we blogged a series of top tips from our team of experts, including VW Bomber director and competition judge Stuart Fryer, toast producer and judge Jeremy Dunn, and screenwriter Martin Sadofski. We are absolutely delighted to see so many of you reading these posts so do pass them on!

For up to the minute competition updates follow us on Twitter and Facebook. Plus, you can get our regular blog updates by subscribing to our RSS feed in the top right hand corner. Good luck to you!

toast's Go Viral contest is spreading!

toast’s Go Viral script to screen contest in association with creative hub IdeasTap has kicked up a storm. But with three weeks left, we’re eager for even more of the world to hear about this great opportunity for someone under 30 to get their viral script made into a high-end production.

In its first week, we gained media coverage from the BBC Writers Room, Broadcast and Televisual magazine. Plus, we had loads of Twitter, Facebook and Google Plus approvals from you, not to mention the newsletters, blogs and forum posts that you sent out for us.

In the second week we blogged a series of top tips from our team of experts, including VW Bomber director and competition judge Stuart Fryer, toast producer and judge Jeremy Dunn, and screenwriter Martin Sadofski. We are absolutely delighted to see so many of you reading these posts.

But, as with any viral, it’s never enough! We want the world and his mother to share this competition! Remember, anyone can enter between the age of 16-30 and it can be about absolutely anything so long as it can be filmed in London over the course of a few days. For further details read the brief on IdeasTap.

For up to the minute competition updates follow us on Twitter and Facebook. Plus, you can get our regular blog updates by subscribing to our RSS feed in the top right hand corner. Good luck to you!

Top Go Viral tips from toast's online content manager

Hello! I am Vicky McNaught-Davis, the online content manager at toast and one of the Go Viral contest judges. Here are my top tips for going viral:

1. Know what a viral is

A film going viral is the dream of many a brand, scriptwriter and production company.  Essentially, it means being watched and promoted through the sheer force of the entertainment value of the video. The first viral video that I remember was Ok Go’s ‘Here It Goes’. It’s a surprising, low-fi video that energised an otherwise fairly average song through a labyrinth of a dance routine. This highlights the need for unexpectedness to ‘go viral’. ‘Here It Goes’ was so weird and entertaining that it evoked a strong reaction in everyone who watched it, so they shared it.

2. Know what type of viral works

Large quantities of viral videos arrive from incidental circumstances, such as Fenton the dog chasing deer across Richmond Park. But those types of virals don’t have a message to convey and arrive through sheer luck. If you want to script a viral, you have to put on a display for the bored at work network to want to share. The Obama girl was an entertaining piece of political campaigning, as are Cassette Boy’s parodies of UK TV. These things were shared because they have a social point that appealed to the middle classes at their desks.

3. Know your audience

These people, myself included, have a short attention span. So, a viral must be succinct and easy to share. A top tip from Marketing Week Live 2012 for me was that cats rule the internet. I found this to be true when I Tweeted the advice and it got re-Tweeted to thousands of others. This is because people across the globe love cats and pictures of cats, but it’s still a personal eccentricity that’s shared by a huge online community.

4. Get inspired

Ad Age recently launched a YouTube monitoring service, which shows you the top viral videos of the day that you visit it on. So, you can see what trends are popular at the moment and the types of videos that are receiving the most shares. That said, originality will make your work a more enduring accomplishment, so don’t be a copycat.

Keep up to date with our video production tips, news and analysis by subscribing to our RSS feed in the top right hand corner, or join us on Twitter and Facebook. Click here for competition tips from producer Jeremy Dunn, click here for tips from script writer Martin Sadofski and click here for tips from viral director Stuart Fryer. Click here to apply.