Viral Marketing and YouTube
More companies are starting to realize the marketing impact and power of posting their TV commercials on YouTube…especially the remarkable or unique ones. YouTube is a social community that thrives on unique video content that gets passed and shared with friends around the web which in turn becomes around the world. The best videos take on viral characteristics.
Viral Marketing
Viral marketing is when a piece of electronic content becomes so uniquely compelling that as people discover it they are excitedly compelled to share it with their network of friends. We have all done this or received content like this. It is the funny videos that people send you links to. It is the joke e-mails, the amazing pictures, stories, or shared items of concern. The best of these get passed around from person to person rapidly – usually by e-mail, Twitter, or on Facebook.
Creating Viral Content
Many people and companies have tried to create viral content. Entire sites, blog posts, and books have been written on the subject of creating viral content. In its purest form, viral content can not be manufactured. That won’t stop people from trying but the best viral content is that which is so uniquely and genuinely created that its transparency and creativity strike a chord with people and the item seems to take on a life of its own – completely unexpectedly to the content creator.
Viral Dreams
It is the hope of every marketer that the content they create would “hit the home run” of becoming viral. A truly viral piece of content brings exposure and marketing profile well beyond the cost of creation. That is why companies and marketers will always keep trying – with the dream that they might strike viral content gold. It is gold because people are not forced to share the content, they willingly participate in consuming it themselves and sharing it within their sphere of influence. A marketer does not have to fight for people’s attention with viral content like they do for instance in traditional media. They willfully have the undivided interaction that is uninterrupted and the trust factor of network sharing.
A Video With Viral Potential
There are tons of examples of good viral videos. Several I have shared in previous posts on this blog. Today, in closing, I will share an Alaskan Airlines YouTube commercial video I discovered this week. It strikes a chord with me for two reasons:
1) It appears that Alaskan Airlines (the company itself) took the initiative to post it online themselves. Which is good social media marketing on their part. Since they created the content and it is funny, unique, and connects with the experience of many travelers…why not re-purpose it with the hope that it might go viral and be shared with tens of thousands of willing viewers – that would be “bonus marketing” for them. (As of this writing it was only posted 4 days ago and has only been viewed by 41 people…but that will surely grow!)
2) I like this video/commercial because I had this exact experience last week when I was flying coast-to-coast myself. Many of you will have experienced it too. So the video is instantly relatable to many in our culture and as a result is funny, memorable, and “sticky” in that we probably would share it with a friend.
Enjoy: Alaska Airlines Sensor Commercial
As always, I weclome your comments of viral marketing or on this video in particular.
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