Some of the most iconic viral videos were made by celebrities. Will Ferrell’s video “The Landlord” was a huge hit. Paris Hilton’s 2008 presidential campaign ad was the definition of viral. Jerry O’Connell’s parody of Tom Cruise was genius. Kobe Bryant jumping over a car was seen by a lot of people. But, as celebrities have learned (and us real people could have guessed), merely putting a famous person in a web video is no guarantee of viral success. Here are 11 attempted viral videos by celebrities that bombed so badly, it kinda makes you second guess their star power.
11. Carson Kressley in “Straight Talk” (<43,000 views Internet-wide)
A fake infomercial starring a “Queer Eye” guy teaching gay people how to interact with boring straight topics like fishing. It’s 71 seconds long yet somehow feels like 15 minutes.
10. Jimmie Johnson’s Self-Help DVD (<43,000 views Internet-wide)
You can tell a little graphics effort went into this fake infomercial featuring NASCAR driver Jimmie Johnson. Unfortunately, it looks like no one bothered to ask Jimmie Johnson if, ya know, he had ANY trace of camera presence or acting skill. The brutally bad script and terrible, terrible, terrible, terrible, terrible voiceover guy don’t do him any favors. The fact that a NASCAR driver with a fan base in the tens of millions could only pull in 43,000 views is a sign that this video was an unbelievable bomb.
9. Kristin Cavallari in “Unsolicited Advice” (<42,000 views on Funny Or Die)
Is Kristen known as being bitchy? We didn’t think so. But this video seems to be her trying to satirize a “bitchy” famous girl persona. The jokes aren’t funny (“The U.S. is broke, like, cutting back on lattes broke.”). The video drags on and on… and, honestly, it’s not going be a viral video if it’s just one minute and 59 seconds of Kristin from “Laguna Beach” talking to the camera. And, it wasn’t.
8. David Spade and Tim Meadows in “Carpet Bros.” (20,000 to 40,000 views)
The now-out-of-business web video production studio 60Frames seemingly followed a paint-by-numbers plan here. Find a few famous people, a kinda-maybe-sorta funny concept, throw a lot of money at it, and, boom, viral success! Except, they learned, that crap is crap, even if it’s got celebrities reciting said crap. The first episode got almost 200,000 views. That’s not bad, but not even close to a return on the investment. By the time the last few episodes rolled around, they were pulling numbers in the abysmal 20,000 to 40,000 range.
7. Lisa Kudrow in “Web Therapy” (unknown views on some site called LStudio)
For some reason, Lexus decided to make their own web video site (strike one). They called it LStudio.com and signed on Lisa Kudrow (strike two) to star in their huge budget signature series. The series is called “Web Therapy” and in it, Kudrow plays a therapist who helps people over a webcam. We don’t know how many views the videos received because LStudio doesn’t publish view counts (strike three). Given that no one has ever, ever mentioned “Web Therapy,” and, according to Compete.com, LStudio gets fewer than 5,000 unique visitors every month, we’re thinking all her videos combined don’t add up to “Chocolate Rain’s” traffic.
6. Sally Jessy Raphael in “Mime” (<37,000 views on Funny Or Die)
It’s kinda sad that this video didn’t work because, unlike every other video on this list, it’s freaking hilarious. Unfortunately, the people who make Internet videos spread have clearly NEVER heard of Sally Jessy Raphael, so this thing crapped out. But it’s completely worth a watch.
5. Anna Faris in “The Multi-Hyphenate” (<37,000 views Internet wide)
No one likes watching web videos about the economy. This is a repeatedly proven scientific fact. This video is about a movie studio cutting back costs because of the economy. By the transititve property, it’s clear why this thing flopped.
4. Dax Sheperd in “Bro Search” (view counts blocked)
A horrible concept that relied solely on the star power of Dax Sheperd to work. And so, yeah, it failed. It failed so badly that Break.com now prevents you from watching most of the episodes.
3. Tony Hawk in “Tony Hawk: Bodyguard” (<23,000 views Internet-wide)
This was filmed to promote the movie “Drillbit Taylor.” Only, unlike this movie, this looks like it was shot on a camcorder and features Tony Hawk doing predictable, lazy skateboard-related gags.
2. Phil Vassar in “Random Grillin’ Tips” (<12,000 views on Funny Or Die)
So Funny Or Die is the home of celebrity web videos. It’s really all they’ve got. But sometimes, their videos just tank. Like this unfunny video with country music… uh… star? performer? fella? Phil Vassar. We’ve never seen a video suffer from this many tone issues in 1:37.
1. Melissa Rivers in “Laundry Fairy” (<5,200 views on YouTube)
This sprung out of the “Celebrity Apprentice.” All laundry detergent, demonstrating a classic lack of understanding how the Internet works, tasked the “celebrities” on the show to make “viral” ad videos for their product. Both teams epic failed. So All professionally produced their own “viral” videos with the celebrities, to show ‘em how it’s done. And by that I mean… their professional ones were just as tragic. This FIVE MINUTE-40 SECOND disaster featuring Melissa Rivers is just one example.
Celebrities are ridiculous! Check out this list of 12 Celebrities Who Look Like They Take The Biggest Craps and 12 Amazing Celebrity Yearbook Photos.
Posted by wondrous A.C. Efron. Be amazed!
Comments