Evian’s campaign ‘Rollerbabies’ TVC on YouTube has scooped an official Guinness World Record for the most viewed online ad of all time.

Created by agency BETC, the ad launched on YouTube has since received over 45 million views worldwide.

According to the Guinness World Record certification, evian ‘Rollerbabies’ is, “the most viewed online advertisement which has been watched 45,166,109 times through online websites adverts as of 9 November, 2009”.

“Our ambition with ‘Rollerbabies’ was to create and launch our first ever global campaign. The combination of community management and posting the film worldwide on YouTube has helped us reach well beyond our expectations: the most viewed video ad on the web ever, and the number one video over the launch month in countries like the US, Russia or Japan where the infamous ‘evian babies’ of 1998 were not previously known. Even more spectacular is the spontaneous relay TV channels around the world gave to this ‘web sensation’ and the 350 equally spontaneous remixed versions of the spot that have now reached millions,” explained Michael Aidan, evian global brand director.

To measure the brand awareness impact of the campaign, Nielsen and YouTube also conducted joint research, adding that evian’s campaign on YouTube has had a massive worldwide viral impact, “positively impacting the evian brand and helping to deliver additional reach beyond traditional media”.

Key findings of the research include:

• Branding research conducted by Nielsen in France of internet users revealed that there has been a demonstrable effect on the evian brand with a significant increase in top of mind, purchase consideration and image dimensions

• Over 80% that saw it in France and in the US considered discussing it and two thirds wanted to share it with friends which partly explains the viral phenomenon

• In France, evian launched a TV ad the day after the YouTube homepage ad had been broadcast. Five days after the campaign was launched on TV, Nielsen research found that 95% of those who viewed the ‘Rollerbabies’ TVC on YouTube had not also seen the ad on TV. This highlights the additional viral effect of launching the campaign on YouTube as well as on TV, and

• Using YouTube Insights, evian discovered that the official French version of the online video ad received over 60% of its views from outside France proving the worldwide viral strength of the original homepage video ads.