Advertising & Marketing: How to create a viral marketing piece

It's pretty simple. Give the viewers something they don't expect, but let them find it themselves.

Here's the new trailor for Mel Gibson's Apocalypto:
[url]http://www.apple.com/trailers/touchstone/apocalypto/large.html[/url]

[b][u]Watch the trailer first[/u][/b] then click on the link below and see if you noticed it:

[url]http://static.flickr.com/45/144158784_85e92326a3_o.jpg[/url]

Very simple and cheap way to be remarkable. Welcome to viral-ville.

As opposed to spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on ads to drive traffic to your site. You slip in something that when found by someone, makes them feel special. They found a burried treasure, and in this age of proclamation, want to let as many people and as quick as possible know of thier findings.

That's how blogs and new media work. The finder's fee has been replaced with feedback through comments and links from other blogs. And I think this little move by Mel will gain him traffic in areas that he wouldn't have gotten by just running a regular trailer.

Did you ever see that Coca Cola "viral" video that they had professionally produced? It was a bunch of people taking videos of their mouth using camera phones and saying "I'm a mouth". It's super cheesy and it's completely opposite of "viral". Viral has to happen on accident (for the most part) or else people aren't excited to spread it around.

Here's the video

It's awful.

Isn't coca cola the second most recognized word in the world, next to OK? Where did I hear that? I swear it was on this forum somewhere.

Anyway...how do you create anything "viral" for a company that's so well known? No one wants to talk about "coca cola" to their friends, there's no need.

Eric: "OMG did you see the new coca cola video, it's AWESOME"

Travis: *slaps eric across the face* "No"

That's the best case scenario.