How can marketers find better while cheaper ways to reach their customers in times of a down turning economy? Often this is the moment where viral marketing comes into mind.

Viral-marketing uses the social networks between human beings and the basic wish to communicate news and interesting facts to improve the own social status.

So a viral video, abbreviated as viral, will be seeded into a pear group of mavens and if it is interesting enough they will pass it to their social contacts to gain some honour to have found this content first. The receivers may act the same way in their social network and so on, which causes the viral spreading of the message.

But most times, marketers are afraid of virals, as there is no guarantee that it will work. A lot of money has been invested in videos that never reached the critical mass to create a viral effect.

I think that nearly every successful viral triggers emotions by using one of the following 4 basic categories:

• Humor / Parody
  “Say no to dirt”
  
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zaHtA89RHUQ
  Views: 1,045,132

• Sexism
  “whizbiz.com.au”
  
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T47kt6DuT-4
  Views: 2,057,454

• Stars
  “5 More Friends uncensored”
  
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fX40RsSLwF4
  Views: 1,399,535

• Surprise
  “Dynamite Surfing”
  
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JR_naKxLEPc
  Views: 1,554,113

Sure, not every viral using one of these story lines needs to be as successful as these examples and the time a viral is swirling around in the net is also important, but maybe it is a good starting point if you think about creating your own viral.

interesting sum up of the sales perspective for the famous NIN "ghost" album. Just missing the figures and the story about their viral campaign for the launch (check: USB sticks in night club toilets).

nice overview of viral videos at youtube for the US-election 2008

nice german overview, which aspects of facebook are valueable for a viral-marketing campaign and which are missing on StudiVZ

results of a very interesting study about viral marketing. Especially interesting due to the fact that this time big agencies like Ogilvy, BBDO and McCann have been queried and even them join now the chorus that viral marketing is an interesting alternative in the times of financial crisis and bailouts. ^^

The 24th International Short Film Festival Berlin presents 24 viral videos. Enjoy - and vote - from 6th Okt. to 6th Nov. 2008!

"Silverpop’s new Share-to-Social feature allows [...] recipients to easily post the email message to their profile page on Facebook or MySpace, where friends can see the message, make comments and even post the email on their own profile pages."

Cool feature and may help some email campaigns to get a more viral touch. Really cool is also that this is trackable. Would be curious to test it!

"Anyone could spend his or her time following around crazies with a video camera. Most of us choose not to. Most of us stick with the 132 views; we don't go for the 40 million." that's exactly what is basic for the chance that a viral will be successfull even if it's still no guarantee.