When I was a youth I watched my fair share of skateboard videos. Many of the videos were produced by skateboard companies, and featured pro skaters performing face-melting tricks with a particular company’s gear. Of course, these videos did a great job of triggering my adolescent consumer reflex and also inspired plenty of repeat viewings as my friends and I rewound and watched the tricks in (mostly) failed attempts to observe and mimic them. Here’s one example excerpt from a World Industries video:
When I read this BusinessWeek article of viral video “dos and don’ts,” I couldn’t help but think of skate videos. They were “viral” in the days before sharing video was as simple as heading over to YouTube, when we’d make VHS copies and trade them around school. Here’s what made them an effective marketing tool:
- Authenticity. They showed great examples of people doing cool things with a company’s product. Better yet, if you were a non-skater and watched these videos, you wanted to start.
- Inexpensive production. Getting a team of sponsored skateboarders together, filming them doing tricks on a skateboard and setting the whole thing to music doesn’t cost a lot of money. Therefore, when these videos were inevitably passed around and shared, they fulfilled a valuable marketing role even though they weren’t being purchased.
- Short length. Segments were usually only a few minutes long, short enough to hold my attention. This is absolutely crucial in a YouTube world.
- Constant reinforcement of the brand. There’s a reason skateboards have eye-popping graphics and logos screened on them, and those logos are highly visible in videos.
- Transparency. As mentioned in the previous example, I always knew exactly who was sponsoring the videos I watched, yet never felt like someone was trying to “stealth market” to me. Indeed, that’s tough to do when “(SKATEBOARD COMPANY) PRESENTS” is prominently displayed in the video.
Now let’s take these attributes and apply them to a very popular viral video… For example, the brilliant “Will it Blend?” series of videos from Blendtec, where a guy in a lab coat blends objects that should never, ever be put in a blender.
What do I see? A product put through extreme tests and coming out far better than expected. Cheaply, but not sloppily produced video. It’s also less than a minute long. And I know these ain’t just any blenders, they’re Blendtec. Finally, I know exactly who brought us this video, since their logo is prominent in the beginning of the spot. Add them up, and you’ve got a viral video that remains entertaining while making me actually want to purchase and use this product.
Although if I bought one, I sure wouldn’t be blending golf balls with it.
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