Evian, the premium bottled-water brand of French foods group Danone, has enjoyed some success in recent years for its imaginative and virally-attractive online video campaigns centred around babies.

Not ordinary babies, though – these are dancing babies and roller-skating babies, all behaving in their body movements and expressions like miniature grown-ups.

From a brand marketing perspective, the success behind such campaigns can be seen in metrics like the 17.8 million views to date of the roller-skating babies video since it was first posted on YouTube in July 2009.

Yet that number pales in comparison to what’s happening with Evian’s latest video posted last month: Baby & Me.

This latest video sees Evian’s babies repeat the formula of previous babies videos to represent “your gleeful inner child,” but this time they want to dance with you. Take a look:

As of today, the video has garnered over 45 million views in the three weeks it's been available on YouTube. That's not all: perhaps of more interest and significance - that brings the phrase 'viral video' to life - is what's happening across the social web according to Visible Measures:

[…] Baby & Me took top billing on the Viral Chart [in the last week of April], garnering a True Reach of more than 35.8 million views. The campaign also has more than 80 related clips, 740,000 Facebook shares, and 11,000 comments. Since it's debut on April 19, the campaign has raked in a True Reach of more than 42.3 million views.

I would imagine Evian's marketers are pleased with such results although I claim no knowledge of their specific objectives for this campaign, nor how they measure what success looks like. (A case study of Evian's Live Young campaign by Syndicate Media Group gives you a great sense of what the measures may be.) Creatively, I think the video works well. So I was interested to find out how the producers matched adults with babies in appearance. Yes, they searched for actors with a clear resemblance between their generations. AdWeek has the story:

[…] The spot, filmed in Buenos Aires and Paris, features adults and kids who were cast because they looked like each other. From there, thanks to some CGI, they mirror each other's dance moves.

AdWeek goes into some detail about the campaign and what else it involves beyond the video. Marketing and social - an imaginative collaboration. [This post is part of an experiment in brand story-telling.]