Viral Video Marketing – The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

Creating funny, interesting and/or useful videos and distributing them on sites like YouTube is a great way to get a lot of free press. But if you have no experience making videos, please do yourself a favor and research what has and hasn’t worked before you try your hand at viral video marketing. Even then… some of the best efforts turn out to be flops.

Here are a few examples of Viral Video Marketing Successes, and a few Total Failures:

Viral Video Marketing Success Story #1
Will It Blend, by BlendTec
BlendTec makes high-end appliances for the home. If you’re looking for a blender that doesn’t get stuck on an ice cube while you’re making margaritas, you need to order from Blendtec. And that is precisely the Value Proposition they get across in their highly entertaining and effective viral video series called “Will It Blend?”.
Here’s an example:

Viral Video Marketing Flop #1
Agencydotcom’s “Going to Work for SUBWAY”
The idea was that they make a viral video about how they go about researching and creating a viral video for a client, for the purpose of getting the client. Did it work? I’ll let the comments (from YouTube) below tell the story:
“Boriiiiing…”
“…Bad, very, very bad!”
“Whenever an agency spends so much time thinking about how to make themselves look good, and no time thinking about how to make the client look good – the warning bells are ringing!”
“This video should have the title ‘how horrible it can look to be a self-important person.’ Perhaps it could be used as a tool on how not to make a video. Have these people got any friends?”
“Anytime the comments are twice as creative and funny as the actually video, something is seriously amiss.”
“Every agency should sit its staff down in front of this vid with the following words ringing in their ears: never. ever. do. this.”
And here’s the video:

Viral Video Marketing Success Story #2
Windward Reports’ Cubical Wars
Windward Reports sells reporting software that provides a way to save developers from the time consuming task of trying to design report templates that satisfy business managers. The less time a developer spends on these annoying reports for managers, the more time they can spend on what they were hired to do in the first place – Develop! Does the video get that across? No, not really. But it’s funny as hell and made me go to the Windward Reports site just to check them out.
Here’s the video:

Viral Video Gone Wrong Example #2
Gary Ruplinger
You may remember Gary Ruplinger from this post about Gary Ruplinger. The poor guy was doing what he thought was a good idea. Make videos to show potential clients a more personal side of the company, while explaining exactly what it is that his company does. The problem was, when you found out “exactly what it is that his company does,” it turned out to be… well, not much. He was soon the center of ridicule across the SEO industry in posts like the one above, and this, this, and this. Here are all of Mr. Ruplinger’s videos.

Bad Viral Marketing Example #3
Alliwantforxmasisapsp.com by Sony
Insulting the viewer’s intelligence is one of the worst things you can do in a viral marketing campaign. It seems to work for that Rich Jerk Guy – sometimes – but at least he’s being honest about being a jerk. You can’t say the same for Sony, which thought it was a good idea to create a fake blog to promote a viral video where someone pretended to be a kid who wanted a Sony PSP for Christmas. All it took was a few “Whois” net queries and the nefarious plot was exposed. What did Sony have to say? Sony posted this on the fake blog:
“Busted. Nailed. Snagged. As many of you have figured out (maybe our speech was a little too funky fresh???), Peter isn’t a real hip-hop maven and this site was actually developed by Sony. Guess we were trying to be just a little too clever. From this point forward, we will just stick to making cool products, and use this site to give you nothing but the facts on the PSP. – Sony Computer Entertainment America”.

Why is it that corporate America assumes that consumers are stupid? Is it because 51% of them voted for Bush? Well, that’s a good reason. But still… DO NOT INSULT THE VIEWER’S INTELLIGENCE! We can’t show you this video because Sony has removed it. Yet another dishonest move; hide the mistake and pretend it didn’t happen.

Should you show off your value proposition in a viral video? As Windward Reports has shown us, the answer is NO you don’t “have” to. As Blendtec has shown us, the answer is YES it “can” work fantastically. You are going to get different answers because there really is no “perfect” formula for making a viral video marketing campaign successful. But there are a few general guidelines that you can follow, which should make it more likely that you get a positive response, and less likely that it backfires into an explosion of bad publicity that is rolling too big and too fast for your PR team to handle.

Three Ways to Increase The Chances of Positive Results on a Viral Video Marketing Campaign:
#1 Be Funny and/or Interesting.
#2 Be Honest.
#3 Don’t Insult the Viewer’s Intelligence.