Billions of dollars are spent on advertising on television and online each year. There are plenty of other forms of marketing but these two media are now the two largest forms of media in terms of dollars spent.  From any of these types of marketing, you can always get some form of a viral effect. This blog is focused on television commercials today and their ‘viral effect’ and how some companies are great at this while others come up short.  However, most of what is said here can be applied to your online advertising and its viral ramifications

As with any competitive market, commercials must distinguish themselves in order to be effective. The typical options for commercials are comedy, cuteness, weirdness, occasionally the ‘Oh my god, I have to go out and by that right now’ commercial (maybe this is called ‘cool factor’), or finally the ‘so insanely annoying you can’t get the commercial out of your head’ approach. (Note: I’m sure there are more technical terms for most of these)

All of these options, along with others not mentioned, can be effective when done right. Of course this all depends on the viewers point of view. However, sometimes you really have to question why a certain commercial was deemed to be ‘the one’, or rather the final cut.

For many people, the Bill Gates/Jerry Seinfeld commercials from the end of 2008 left you scratching your head, didn’t they? But at least you could kinda figure out that they had something to do with Microsoft. Budweiser does a great job of making fun and/or funny commercials that are easily recognizable during the Superbowl and just about any other time.  GoDaddy.com, a website domain name hoster/provider, had very effective Superbowl commercials two years ago in that there were lots of scantily clad women running around and the commercials were fun.  However, while there was a web address at the end of the commercial, when you went to this address you could not find the commercials but instead found the boring domain name website.  The CareerBuilder Superbowl commercials from 2008′s Superbowl were very strange but were also attention drawing… you really wanted to know what this commercial was about and in the end you were easily able to figure it out.

Sometimes you see great commercials that do everything but tell you what you really want to know, “What/who is this about and what do they want me to buy?”  Such an example is in the link below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4dm-OnmLXY&feature=channel_page

This commercial aired during the first week of the NFL playoffs.  While watching you were probably drawn in by the popular figures; it’s got good background music that might give you goosebumps; it’s a very tame commercial and not really annoying, even after watching it several times in a short amount of time.  The one BIG thing it doesn’t have is a “what am I supposed to do now?”

Is it a sports commercial?  Is it another randomwebservice.com ad?  Is it an ad for some new clothing line? Anti-drug commercial?  Ok you get the picture.  Other than a SV-C.com at the bottom of the last few seconds of the commercial, you have no clue for whom this commercial was made and possibly whom it was intended to influence.  After several weeks of airing this commercial it finally came out that the commercial was for Gatorade.

When I originally posted a brief write up on this commercial, there was nothing in Google referring to it and typing in SV-C linked to some random company website.  Finally after a week or two, several blog posts popped up and severall mentioned that is was a Gatorate spot. A few weeks after that Gatorade made it apparent that “G” is the new Gatorade brand.

So, on one hand, this commercial had some viral marketing in that people were confused as hell about it. On the other hand, there were no direct links to this actual company’s website found in Google/Yahoo/etc when you search on “What is G” or “G commercial” (at least not as of Tuesday 1/5/09).  Fortunately for this company the internet has evolved to the point where any random person can find an answer to just about anything. However, I contend that this is not ‘viral marketing’ but rather a crapshoot of sorts.  Jack in the Box and their commercials which ended with hangintherejack.com led customers to a great website for viral marketing.

I’d wager that if you put numbers against numbers, traffic and more importantly sales are much higher when there is a clear message of who/what the commercial is about and when you have directed listing in Google/Yahoo for visitors to click on and visit your website.  I get viral marketing when it’s cheap… but when you spend millions on a commercial and hope for a viral marketing reward… something’s wrong with your marketing department.