Swedish telecom company Comhem based their most recent commercials up on familiar viral clips and TV-series and there are some points that viral successes have in common. We listed a few of them that we consider extra important beyond the obvious features of sharing. At mashable.com you can read about more tips on how to make you viral site a big success.

• Keep the content simple and easy to engage with but do not forget to add a twist. Site navigation and ‘share this-applications’ makes it easier for visitors to take part of the content and share it with others.

• Make sure your visitors get emotionally engaged to your content. Empathy is the best emotion you can create and the feeling that most likely will trigger your visitors to spread your content.

• A viral media site is not about you entering the stage to deliver while the public passively consume. Consider your work as a joint activity and share your digital space with your audience. Offer the visitors the possibility to create their own content as applications, t-shirts or playlists.

• The only reason “Chuck Norris facts” exists is because the creator (that also wrote “Van Diesel facts”) asked his audience: “What do you want?”

• Most viral successes grow organically in terms of shares. This means they did not became stars over a night. Have patience and prepare yourself for some hard work.

It has been speculated about wether it is a grass rott initiative or if Smirnoff stands behind the viral campaign that have recived more feed back than expected, positive as well as negative. The campaign site was included in the picture from the start and can as well be followed from Twitter. Even if Smirnoff behind the initiative or not, it emphasises the question what happens when consumers take full controll over a brand and creates their own viral campaign?

Jägermeister have at several occasions taken part of similar activities but with less viral features. Profile products were sent to groups that profiled themself at parties as Team Jägermeister in order to activate celebrants in more or less controversial drinking games.

How should brand managers relate to this type of consumer initiatives? Is it positive or negative exposure? Is it the ultimate brand tribute or the brand manager’s worst nightmare?

They achieved great success with their last film “Carousle” by Adam Berg and continues with another well produced film with potential to create word of mouth and viral spread. Philips is working under the idea that engaging content is the key to word-of-mouth. By providing content that is innovative and exciting, they manage to create the commitment necessary for the campaign to be disseminated.

Södertörn University looks beyond the traditional school brochure and  lets the students present the school through a stop-motion video published on YouTube:

Warren Buffet lends his voice to the latest Geico commercial. The clip in itself is not that engaging, but with the richest man in the world dressing up as Axl Rose you can go far in the viral world:

För samtliga Old Spice-reklamer, besök deras YouTube-kanal

Nedan finner ni filmklippet i sin ursprungliga form, utan några varumärken (förutom deras eget) närvarande:

Ni kan själva prova att lägga upp ert varumärke i filmen här.

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