Viral Tracker created an infographic to illustrate the growth:

Key Takeaway: Online video has redefined how video plays into the marketing mix. Use it to pull people to your brand - emphasis on “pull.”

See the full infographic at Viral Tracker

Content overload happened with advertising as well. Standing out becomes harder when people have too many options. We’re entering a validation era where content needs to come from trusted sources and be easily digestible.

Infographic found on Courtenay Bird’s Tumblr

The Story: Fantasy Baseball has grown into a very sophisticated art. No longer do fantasy fanatics rely on simple statistics. Pure Quality Starts (PQS) is a stat that measures the dominance of any given pitcher. The stat was developed by Fantasy service BaseballHQ.

The Campaign: The site’s publisher, Ron Shandler, “leaned into the wonkiness” as Joe said. He offered a free $99 subscription to BaseballHQ to anyone who got a vanity license plate that says “PQS-5.”

The Brilliance: People in niches love finding others like them. They’re tribes. Finding simple and inexpensive ways to connect your wonks is a great way to build and strengthen your base. This campaign could hit all 50 states, start thousands of conversations and cost about $5,000. Not too shabby.

Read Joe’s original post at his blog

http://www.jchernov.com/the-coolest-viral-campaign-youve-never-heard

I recently spoke with Sandra Fathi, President of Affect Strategies, about their recent partnership with Landline TV, a comedy production company. They have worked together on projects for the PRSA, Regus, Kony Solutions, and Absolute Software.

How did the partnership with Landline TV begin?

We met with someone in PR who was looking for work. He wasn’t a fit for a variety of reasons, but he was working in this comedy production company. Their videos were on Bablegum, Comedy Central and College Humor. Their work blew us away.

At the time I was head of PRSA’s Technology Section. We asked them to create a video poking fun at the PR industry. It was a huge hit - very fun and irreverent.

As soon as we had a client who was eager to do a video, we jumped in.

Everyone likes funny videos. How do you make sure you reach your target audience?

There’s always one important rule to remember: if you build it, no one will show up. We use a lot of different ways to make sure the videos don’t just stay on a ghost town of a page.

One set of videos that we worked on was for was for Regus, a multinational flexible workspace provider with more than 1000  locations. Our job was to drive business to 18 office centers in New York City.

The videos were about entrepreneurs in funny situations. They created YouTube account and promoted the videos. We made sure they were tagged well and very findable. They were also promoted through Twitter, Facebook, traditional PR, and a small ad campaign.

Some of the best reactions came from Regus employees themselves. They all loved the videos and spread them through their personal networks as well. Eventually, other Regus locations asked to use the videos for TV advertising.

What drives the content of these videos? Is it usually the client or does Landline TV just do their thing?

They’re such a creative team. We give them a brief on the client and product. This includes direction on what the client wants to accomplish with the campaign and what message they want to promote.

Then the Landline crew scripts and executes the video with our guidance. They’re a little edgy, so we need to make sure it stays within the bounds of the brand’s comfort level. But we give them the freedom to brainstorm and come up with ideas for the client.

1. Answer your customer’s biggest question - You know the questions all your customers ask. Move beyond the FAQ page and answer them in video.

2. Give the product experience - I like to try before I buy, as do most folks. Show how your product works. Show the packaging. Show the support people customers can reach out to.

3. Interview your best customer - Anonymous online reviews are trusted second only to word of mouth. Putting a face, name and voice behind a review only increases its validity.

Read more tips at Rohit Bhargava’s blog

Bio: Adi Sideman is the CEO and President of Oddcast. Prior to founding Oddcast in 1999, Adi produced more than thirty online games, including HBO’s Sex and the City and The Sopranos, and Warner Brothers’ The Matrix game. In 1996, Adi produced the first animated ads on AOL.

How do you convert the fun experience a consumer creating an avatar or any other sort of interactive experience into a lasting relationship with a brand?

Our business is really a word of mouth business. In that sense, being top of mind and enabling users to become brand ambassadors is a constant goal. Achieving that top-of-mind status is something that has always driven results for brands. At Oddcast, the additional layer that goes beyond traditional word of mouth - is personalization. The idea is that once a user invests in a piece of media, a message, or a narrative, by personalizing it (with their own images from Facebook, their voice, a karaoke song or even a video through augmented reality), they are then more prone to share it because it incorporates some of their own personality and creativity. They’re then part of the narrative, which adds another connection between the experience, the brand and the end user.

We look at it as another layer of word of mouth marketing, the personalization layer. Before digital technologies, creating such experiences was impossible

What do you consider when developing an interactive campaign to ensure the participants walk away with a clear impression of the brand while not feeling marketed to?

We’re trying to strike that balance every day. Consumers want content, not advertising. And advertisers are becoming more and more aware that hitting their brand over the head of the consumer doesn’t work as well as incorporating their brand into a narrative or content that the consumer can relate to, cares about. The result is that our applications look more and more like content and less like advertising. The best campaigns are able to both enagegd a user on a narrative or entertainment level and communicate a brand message. That’s the holy-grail that we strive for every day.

Where do you see interactive marketing going in the next few years?

First of all, to say the obvious, interactive advertising is the future along with targeted messaging. Word of mouth and social will play a big role in this. Harnessing the consumers and the users in order to propagate the brand experience  is the going to be the key.

If you remember in Minority Report, Tom Cruise was running through the mall and posters were addressing him by his name. That’s targeted. That’s personalized. That’s the future. It’s an experience that the potential user can identify with and also talk about.

At Oddcast we’re building the tools that allow for this type of personalization. We’re putting together the building blocks needed for constructing the future of advertising.

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Did you know Exclusive Interviews are a governing member benefit? Contact Tarah@WOMMA.org to discuss this and the many other benefits of governing membership.

Sales certainly did increase, but how will they look in one year. Viral success quickly vanishes, as we have seen with the Evian Babies and the John West Bear Fight. What matters is how you follow up the video. Do you funnel the captive audience to a certain destination? Do you provide an opportunity for participation?

No doubt the Old Spice Man has set many standards, but if sales slowly teeter off, it will also prove that the best viral video is just a sprint without a solid community engagement effort.

Read more about the marathon and the sprint at 1000heads

Take a minute and think about where you were when you heard about the Old Spice Guy viral video campaign or the Dry Erase Board Girl. It was likely at work, either from a co-worker or by surfing your various online social channels. If so, you are a proud member of the Bored at Work Network (BWN), which is the group of people that enables content to go viral.

At a recent viral-media meetup, BuzzFeed CEO and The Huffington Post co-founder, Jonah Peretti, described how the BWN must adopt content in order for it be a viral success. The BWN, Peretti says, effectively decides what is popular.

Read more about the BWN and how to cater your content to them at GigaOM.

Image Credit: Going Concern

The Results:

Cisco’s video “Who is Ted from Accounting?” - 7,876 views

Brigham Young University’s video “Study like a Scholar, Scholar” - 1,896,231 views

BYU might have had success, but this proves that if there is a formula, it isn’t clear. And few would argue that it could be replicated for years on end.

Key Takeaway: Stop looking for a formula. Engage. Create content. Do what works for your brand, not someone else’s.

Read more at Top Rank Blog