Bizsuccess

Thursday, November 5, 2009
By Pattie Baker

Listen, no one really knows the magic formula for “going viral” on the internet, but, my goodness, if you can somehow discover the silver bullet, you can get your company name all over the place in a short amount of time for little to no money.  The videos that seem to be spreading like wildfire lately seem to have a common theme—creative spirit.  I’m thinking we are absolutely starved for creativity as a society right now, and when we see a video that touches the fun, alive, creative essence of our humanity, we respond—mostly by hitting “send.”

That’s exactly what I did just this morning with this video.  I posted it on Facebook, I tweeted about it on Twitter, I added it to my blog, and I sent it to several friends with this subject line: “I LOVE this!”  And yes, I even got curious enough to go to the sponsor’s website. And I found myself thinking about the sponsor (Volkswagen) and where the company is going with this campaign, and how it might fit into my life at some point.  You wanna’ know how many times I’ve thought about Volkswagen in my life?  Absolutely zero, except for when my brother and I used to punch each other in the car saying, “Punch buggy no punch back” every time we passed a Volkwagen Beetle.

I was on the web site for a moving company yesterday that had a picture of a senior couple and a line that said, “We specialize in senior moves.”  Now, doesn’t that line just suggest a really fun video, perhaps of seniors dancing wild and crazy, elegantly, playfully?  The little tag line at the end, “We specialize in senior moves” with the company logo, phone number and web address would be all you need to say.  I’m guessing that video would fly over the internet, especially at the fingertips of seniors (this company’s target audience!)

What can you do to present your company tag line in a surprising way?  What creative concept can you turn into a campaign or contest?  What virtual buzz can you inspire your target audience to get behind?

Think outside the box and have some fun.  We could always use more of that.