Last month I wrote an article titled “The Ultimate Blend: How Blendtec Crafted the Perfect Viral Ad Campaign.” The article itself went viral and began spreading across the Internet. It hit the front page of Digg.com and generated an enormous amount of traffic.

For the past few weeks, I have been working on a viral campaign of my own. The topic is sustainable environmental policies with a focus on solar energy. My campaign must be informative, spread virally across the Internet, and generate a large revenue stream. If the campaign is able to meet revenue projections, I will be able to donate a considerable portion of the resulting income (more than 50%) to charitable environmental organizations.

For my campaign to work, I must pay attention to every detail of the brand perception and identity of the videos and their characters. It hasn’t been easy.

My greatest difficulty has been balancing the potential viral response (will people share the videos with everybody they know?) with a positive brand identity that will drive my revenue stream. Lets look at a video with a strong viral response.

Miss Teen “I Failed Kindergarten” may have almost 26 million views but it came at the cost of a negative brand impression. I really feel bad for South Carolina because she just destroyed her future. How is she supposed to get a job if potential employers know she is not only immensely stupid but also incapable of speaking her native language?

Now lets look at a viral video that has powerful and positive branding.

There are three factors that I believe are responsible for this video’s revenue driving power.

• The girl in the video is attractive. A positive sexual image always sells.
• The tinsleyadvertising account the video was posted under raises questions about if the video is or isn’t an ad.
• The video doesn’t focus on the product at all, and the Tinsley employee swears Nintendo didn’t pay it for. It doesn’t look like an advertisement so people don’t resist it.

The video is also only two weeks old and it has accumulated nearly 2 million views (half of which were mine). This is an excellent start, but only time will tell if its viral response was able to create tens of millions of views.

My video campaign then is still a big question mark. I hope that by combining hot girls and human stupidity I can create a powerful viral response. However, to drive revenue I must create a strong branded main character. If I told you more about what I was planning, I’d be giving Miss Teen South Carolina a run for her money in the contest of “dumbest Internet personality,” so for now I will keep quiet.

In the meantime, I am fielding suggestions for an appropriate environmental organization to make donations to. E-mail your favorite choices (they must do work to promote solar energy) to liopfeedback@klemowllc.com.