Back in May, I wrote a post that analyzed how Blendtec was able to create such a successful viral advertising campaign.  For those that are unaware, a viral ad is an advertisement that is meant to be shared from person to person, saving the business money that they normally would have to spend on advertising space.  A successful viral ad allows businesses to demonstrate their products to massive numbers of people at extremely low costs.  In this slightly delayed follow up, we will look at some of the best viral ads on the web.  I encourage you to use the concepts illustrated in the original post as well as the following examples if you plan to impliment a viral advertising campaign for your business.

With over 50 million views, Guitar has been an extremely successful viral ad.  It takes advantage of the human fascination with extreme skill and directs this curiosity people feel (How do you learn to play like that?) directly towards a link to a website that teaches guitar lessons.  If I ever decide to learn how to play guitar, this is where I would go first.  The ad works.

This is another great ad that plays on the human fascination with extreme skill.  We see soccer star Ronaldinho put on a pair of Nike shoes before he demonstrates why he gets paid tons of money to play soccer.  The use of celebrities in ad campaigns is nothing new, but this is different then your convential TV ad.  While I doubt that this video would have 25 million views if it featured a no name soccer player, it is the demonstration of skill that made this video viral.

This ad works because it is funny, and it involves animals.  The simple existence of the “LoL-Cat” is all I need to reference if you want to know why this works in viral videos.

This ad had a great viral response on the web.  47 seconds of awkward rapping is almost guaranteed to get shared on the Internet.  Also, this ad spawned copycat videos that were even more awkward.

Oh, my god…

I am a huge fan of this viral spot.  Created by ad-giant Ogilvy, Dove Evolution works well as a viral ad for a lot of different reasons.  It focuses on Body Image which we are naturally obcessed with.  It has great pacing and great use of music which work together with great timelapse visuals in photoshop to produce shocking results.  Any ad that makes people say “Wow” is going to go viral.

If you are trying to create a viral video for advertising purposes or just for the heck of it, feel free to shoot me an e-mail.  I’m happy to try and help.