In recent weeks, there have been a series of videos on YouTube, showing how how you can use a cell phone to pop popcorn! In the video (here), you see 4 cellphones used to pop kernels on a coffee table by calling the handsets. The videos ended up being emailed around the world, with the tagline “This is why you should never use a cell phone” – the idea being if that’s what it did to popcorn, whattabout your brain?!
Well it all turned out to be viral marketing from a small Bluetooth headset company named Cardo Systems. The company, based in Pittsburgh, devised the videos to promote the use of its headsets.
Interestingly, the viral nature of the videos meant that other users started creating “parodies”- one video showed someone using popped popcorn to explode an iPhone! At any rate, the videos were a tearaway success, with 15 million people have watching them since Cardo Systems put up the first ones on May 28th.
Abraham Glezerman, the CEO of Cardo Systems, put the minds of those who were concerned to rest by saying “Anyone knows it would take 10 million handsets to accomplish something like that ….. I was quite surprised that some people took it for real.”
You can see the video(s) here.
[Via: Wireless Week]