Fish That Plays Fetch Like A Dog Latest In Viral Marketing Stunts For Feature FIlms

The most popular viral video of last week didn’t feature cats (for once), but a fish, and not just any fish, but one that plays fetch. Take a watch:

Having been live and online for just over a week, the video has garnered well over 1.5 million views across multiple postings to a variety of video sharing sites (the YouTube version is currently just shy of a million) and generated a great deal of publicity, getting some prime real estate on the AOL Homepage, LaughingSquid, and the twitter feed of entrepreneur Guy Kawasaki.

Turns out we’ve all been duped (as is usually the case when something online nowadays seems too cool to be true, like that Japanese trend where individuals make their dogs look like Minecraft characters). The video is actually well staged trickery, designed to promote the July 10th release of the Ryan Reynolds and Ben Kingsley flick Self/less.

According to the faux description found within several of the videos on the YouTube channel, the upload is of a fish with the mind of a dog – the result of a mind transfer process known as ‘shedding’. This cutting-edge scientific, neurobiological process was seemingly created by a PhoenixBiogenic.com

and a cursory search for the company reveals its actually a promotional website for Self/less. Apparently, the plot of Self/less revolves around this same type of ‘shedding’. Judging by the trailer, the film portrays a billionaire (Kingsley) who’s only hope to survive cancer is a radical medical procedure called “shedding,” in which his consciousness is transferred to a healthy body (more specifically, Reynold’s very health body).

This isn’t the first ilm to use viral animal videos to to build anticipation for a film’s release (and there are a few other ‘shedding’ videos, too, like this one of a cat that thinks it’s a bird). Rise of the Planet of the Apes was propelled to number one in the box office four years ago, supported in large by its viral campaign feature an Ape with an AK-47 (the video of which has over 34 million views and counting).