In the previous post I talked about what a viral video is and how it can benefit your company. I also talked about two of the many factors that can help your video go viral, humor and surprise.

Another factor that is important in determining the probability that your video will go viral is how realistic it is. In the case of viral videos it is actually a good thing to look homemade.

A great example of this is was done by Quicksilver:

The video looked pretty amateur so that it wouldn’t be an obvious promotion. Quicksilver just snuck their name in at the very end, so people watching it would just think it was a video made by some surfers with some dynamite. Its possible that is was homemade and then Quicksilver put their name on the end but I bet that they produced it that way so it would look amateur.

A very poor example of this would be a video made by a company known as pennysaver. This video was obviously made with the intentions of going viral, I cringe to think how much money they blew on a huge flop.

Another tactic in getting your video to go viral is to make something copyable. Starburst made a commercial that enough people found humorous that they copied the video in their own ways.

Some of the copies made are: remixes, berries and cream and starwars, spoofs and animated versions

There is no equation for creating a viral video, but these are a few ideas and some things to avoid.

Phil Sanders
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