THE 14TH ANNUAL SHORTY AWARDS

The Shorty Awards honor the best of social media and digital. View this season's finalists!
From the 9th Annual Shorty Awards

Sonic the HedgeDOG

Entered in Comedy Video

Objectives

To give a boost to Sonic the Hedgehog's YouTube channel, we needed to give fans an epic "I can't believe this is on Sonic's official YouTube channel" style video that would organically draw a lot of eyeballs to the page.

(And we also needed to promote the 25th-anniversary plush toys!)

Strategy and Execution

To achieve this, we needed to do something ridiculous. Something absurd. Something funny. We needed to strike internet gold.

So, we bought a Sonic the Hedgehog dog costume, taped wooden sticks to the backs of the Sonic 25th anniversary plush toys, and found the cutest English Bulldog in all the land. With everything in place, we had the recipe for a "paw-fect" YouTube video (See what we did there?).

To make the story compelling, we opened on Sonic's best friend, Tails, imprisoned in a cage made of chopsticks (Hey, we don't have an Avengers budget, okay?). Dr. Eggman shows up and laughs at him (what a jerk face). Sonic the HedgeDOG appears in all his svelte, speedy glory and chases the evil, yet surprisingly shrill and wimpy, Dr. Eggman away.

With state-of-the-art dog influence techniques (treats), we were able to get Sonic the HedgeDOG to completely destroy Tails' chopstick prison; an action-packed resolution to an emotional roller-coaster of a story. Sonic then rescues his best friend and a golden hit YouTube star is born.

Results

The results for this video were incredible and it became the HIGHEST PERFORMING NON-TRAILER VIDEO of all time on Sonic's YouTube channel.

- 722k Views

- 4.8K Thumb Ups

- 789 Comments

All with 0 paid media

Some fan comments:

- "I don't know what I saw....But I'm gonna watch it 27 more times." – The Hypster Man

- "The Sonic Twitter and YouTube page better be the designers of his next game." – RandomGamerCory

- "Only Sonic social media could post this, call it advertising, and still get a 99% positive reception. And I have no problem with that whatsoever." – Jmotion

- "Why does this even exist?" – Green Snow King

Media

Video for Sonic the HedgeDOG

Entrant Company / Organization Name

Ayzenberg, SEGA of America

Link

Entry Credits