BBC world news recently made an embarrassing error during a news broadcast about Syria by showing a logo which supposedly belonged to the United Nations security council (UNSC). The Logo however, actually belonged to the UNSC (United Nations Space Command) in the popular video game Halo. A BBC spokesperson apologized for the error.
BBC News makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all images broadcast. However, very occasionally mistakes do happen. Unfortunately an incorrect logo was used during a segment on last week's News at One bulletin and we apologise to viewers for the mistake.
But Youtube, of course, had the video uploaded for those who missed out on the actual broadcast.
This video, which was only released a week ago, currently has over 374,000 views. The mistake made by BBC grabbed the attention of many people around the world. But the mistake by BBC turned out to be a brilliant piece of advertising for the makers of Halo, which made many people wonder if advertising was in fact the original intention.
This type of video is known as a viral video, which when uploaded spreads from person to person like a virus. Viral videos can be an extremely effective marketing tool because it can reach millions of people easily and is free to upload.
Kony 2012 was uploaded on youtube on March 5, 2012 about the head of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), a Ugandan guerrilla group and alleged that he kidnapped children and forced them to become soldiers. This video got a staggering ninety million views.
This video got people thinking and other videos demanding action against Kony and got NGOs rethinking their awareness programs.
Canadian celebrity Justin Bieber, among other celebrities, rose to fame after record producers saw videos of him singing on the popular site youtube. There are now sites which track viral videos, listing them by number of views.
Viral videos are a very effective way of marketing available at the moment.. Even news events captured by a simple camera phone can be uploaded on to the internet which could be classified as citizen journalism.
