From now on, the most successful marketers will be those who create advertising as content. You can call it viral, if you like, the be key will be to package a branding message inside of something that informs or entertains, or both. The target audience will need to find it relevant.
Relevance applies to more than text ads attached to search. It applies to everything.
Here’s an AdAge piece about Dove’s success with a YouTube video. You can watch the video here.
Wow. But then, Dove has a lot of money to throw behind promoting their youtube.com campaign. Don’t think that a business can just toss a video onto youtube and expect overnight success. I’m guessing it takes money to promote such videos through big PR firms. And big PR firms can get a video mentioned on a big blog, TV, and radio…
A tiny company can use youtube to an advantage. But chances are, rewards will be localized.
With that said, there’s still the chance a video can become popular on its own. But that’s rare.