A buddy sends you a link to a video. You’re not too busy so you click on it and up comes a couple on a date. The check for dinner arrives and the gentleman explains that the extravagant sum he’s paying ensures him, at the very least, a sexual tit-for-tat.
Following the punchline, you find out what you just saw (and probably tried not to laugh at) was a commercial for a book published by the prestigious & and buttoned down & Harper-Perennial.
You’ve also just witnessed the new age of viral videos. No longer are clips showing a man wearing a fake, bright orange afro kicking someone in the pants solely about nut-kicking. More likely, that knock to the crotch is trying to both entertain you and get you to notice a product.
But considering that about $15 billion dollars are spent in a single year in the US, viral campaigns are given a fraction of a budget of what an ad for television would get.
Companies don’t yet trust the unpredictability of online video nor should they. Directors can’t guarantee that they’re creating a video that will become emailed back and forth as well as viewed on sites like YouTube. However, video makers with a proven knack for marrying entertainment with product are already emerging. And, despite the small budgets they’re allowed, viral video makers are being given freedom to create material edgier than anything on TV & just as long as it gets people watching.
Now that just about every major television network has either created or signed onto a video hosting site, online video is gaining the trust of advertisers and will be used more and more in the future.
Even well-established companies such as Harper-Perennial are turning their established cogs in other directions as they look past the printed page to reach audiences that spend more time behind a monitor than a magazine. Viral videos aren’t just spreading among individuals anymore. They’re infecting the old ways of business too.
Brian Lisi is a man about town, a ScribeMedia.Org intern and a budding new media conceptualist.
