You Can’t Make a Viral Video

You can not create a viral video.  The act of trying to make a video viral automatically disqualifies it from ever truly being viral.  User-created (read: not corporate produced) videos are made “viral” by those millions of people who busted up over Gary Brolsma’s “Numa Numa” video, watched in disbelief as Chris Crocker had a mental breakdown in support of Britney Spears, and may have personally identified with the Star Wars Kid…and then passed those videos along to their friends.

Marketing departments can absolutely create videos that have the qualities of popular viral videos, but that doesn’t make them viral.  When your marketing department creates a video that’s funny, seemingly unplanned and purposely amateur in appearance and quality, it’s not viral.  If millions of people see it (largely due to a sophisticated SEO plan and money to back up its promotion), it’s still not viral.  It’s just popular (but usually not even as popular as real viral videos).

Just remember…we see through your fake viral videos anyways.  And it feels cheap.  Stop trying to dupe us and state the obvious: that you’re trying to advertise to us.  We’re used to being advertised to; it doesn’t offend us.  What offends us when you try to convince us that some one “just like us” made the video, instead of a multi-national corporation with a 10-person marketing department, a flip cam and 2 weeks of research and development behind it.

Why do Marketing Execs insist on the creation of “viral” video anyways?  Instead, what you should focus on is producing quality material (funny optional, poignant works well, too) that will enable your consumers to connect with your company in a meaningful way.  A great example is Coca-Cola’s Happiness Machine.  It’s an obvious advertisement for Coca-Cola, but will leave you smiling.