Have you wondered how to create a YouTube video that “goes viral” and creates a torrent of new clients for your business?
Here are 3 essential components for a viral video that can generate business for you:
- It must be entertaining/hilarious/amazing
- It must have a business objective, a reason for being
- A mechanism so that people can connect with you and become a customer
Here are 2 videos that have fulfilled those 3 requirements:
1. “Mattress Dominoes World Record Attempt” (Bensons for Beds, UK)
What we can learn from this video
- You don’t have to push your agenda/brand (interested people will seek you out), put the focus on the entertainment value – in this case a World Record Attempt
- Leave clues to who you are
- Sign up for a new YouTube account using your brand name
- Be very subtle with your branding – in this case, the door of the truck had everything prospective clients needed
2. “Printing’s Alive” (Pazazz Printing, USA)
What we can learn from this video
- Be passionate about who you are and what you do. It’s infectious. People are envious of passionate people, because their own lives are mostly dull
- Tell a story
What other examples of corporate viral videos have you seen? Provide links to them in the comments below.
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Hi Sheldon,
These viral videos are great and they hit the 3 essential components you mention really well. My personal favourite is a couple of years old but I think is still one of the best. It’s for the (then) new Triumph Rocket 3 motorbike http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKEuzxC4eGc Again, it hits all your 3 points really well. The other aspect I think that makes us like then and tell everyone we know about them is that they look so amateurish yet the best ones will have cost a packet to produce!
Paul
Thanks Paul for the Triumph video. It starts out so serious I thought it was going to be a documentary, but at precisely the right moment the hilarity begins. “here we see an emergency stop where someone has dropped their badger on the road”. Classic monty python style English comedy.
What can we learn from this video?
* Don’t take your brand too seriously, have fun with it
As Paul points out the videos need us to want to tell everyone we know. The whole point of viral campaigns are for them to get passed on and for the viral to spread the message out there. It’s all very well making the video amazing or entertaining but it has to be amazing enough or entertaining enough for us to pass it on!
An example of great kiwi viral videos are the Gingerbread Viral Videos for the New Zealand Bakery of the Year competition: http://www.onlinemarketingnz.com/2008/1022/gingerbread-gangster-viral08/
Viral videos seem to get most of the attention, but lets not forget that virals don’t have to be video based either…
Justas, thanks for your contribution. I’m not a fan of that Gingerbread video I’m afraid. I don’t think it’s a very good example of a viral video. It has very few of the elements that this article is about. And I think the related Gingerbread Man Haka video could be improved by simply making the url at the end of the video bigger.
I disagree, the Gingerbread viral videos have alot of the elements this article talks about. They are infectious, entertaining, tell a story, have a business objective, a website so people can connect with them, etc.
Just came across another one, but I think the branding is TOO subtle, what do you think?:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isC32ev4Lw4