Business Opportunities Weblog

January 9, 2007 by Rich Whittle | 1 Comment

Inc.com:

MerlynDHZ shot a digital video of himself and his buddies flying down ramps, gliding across railings, and doing other skateboard-like stunts in their Heelys, sneakers with retractable wheels hidden in the soles.

The next day, he uploaded the clip onto the video-sharing Web site YouTube. Within a month, more than 2,000 people had viewed the 90-second snippet. A few fans even linked to it on their personal MySpace homepages.

What fans may not know is that MerlynDHZ and the other skaters in the video work for Heeling Sports Ltd., the Carrollton, Texas, company that makes Heelys. Heeling Sports is one of a growing number of businesses seeding YouTube with short videos to generate buzz on the cheap.

So-called video viral marketing has exploded over the past year, thanks to increased broadband capacity and sites like YouTube, which make it easy to upload and share videos online.

Indeed, seven out of 10 Internet users have watched an online video, and 30 percent of those people have shared one with friends, usually via e-mail, according to a survey by the Online Publishers Association, a research group in New York City.

The same study shows that viral videos translate into sales. Sixty-six percent of the people who watch videos online have seen an ad clip. About one-third of those viewers visited the marketer’s Web site, and 8 percent made a purchase.

Amid such clutter, it’s easy to get lost. The funnier or more creative the spot, the better. To build buzz for its new iced-tea malt beverage, for example, Smirnoff posted a two-minute parody of a rap video that featured country-club prepsters rapping about finger sandwiches, croquet, and, of course, Smirnoff Raw Tea. Within a few weeks, more than one million people watched the “Tea Partay� video.

Photo by MerlynDHZ.

In Ideas | 1 Comment
Tags: Ecommerce, Internet, Marketing, Video