After discussing the online viral marketing efforts behind the Bros-Icing-Bros phenomena, I wanted to take a deeper dive into the online genre that is viral marketing and see if Youtube somehow produces profits or monetizes an entity. Fleischner defines viral marketing as the phenomenon that facilitates and encourages people to pass along a marketing message about a specified product, service, or company. So--how can a viral video produce profits for an industry, organization, individual, or service?
Well, YouTube makes no bones about it how important the "views" are to their website, in fact if you search "viral marketing" on their page, a contest for $10,000 pops up as the number one video--is that out of coincidence, I think not. When the Minnesota Wedding Dancing Party Video posterized the Internet (still does) in all the various social media forms: twitter, facebook, youtube, and the like....people fail to realize who are the big winners during this worldwide buzz. During this viral phenomena, Chris Brown was possibly in the deepest of all lows for his career as he was sentenced to 180 hours of community service and five years of probation for domestic assault. Seemingly in utter turmoil during and after the incident by pleading guilty to battery charges, the rapper's sales exploded through the help of the video.
Some of the numbers....staggering
-Browns sales of his "Elusive" album increased over 160%, virtually overnight.
-After the video was released, Brown's "Forever" escalated to top of the charts of downloaded singles on I-tunes.
-His number of downloads on I-tunes pre video were 3,000 (7/17) and post video 50,000+ (7/26)
-The video has produced over 50 million views in just over one year (June 20th, 2009).
----So, if 1/2 of 1% of the audience purchases, downloads, or buys anything relating to "Forever" by Chris Brown since he is also credited for the songwriting efforts, that will deliver a conversion of over 250,000 individuals. Simply choosing his video for the song instead of say Usher, Micheal Jackson, or heaven forbid Vanilla Ice.
Then, if you have the opportunity, go to www.jkweddingdance.com and you will find it staggering that they have actually raised over $34,000 in "donations" to the Sheila Wellstone Institute, an individual who was an organizer, advocate, and national champion in an effort to curb domestic violence in the surrounding community. Quite a unique twist considering the music choice to their big viral video. What they should have done was ask Chris Brown to donate some of the proceeds from his sales to this cause, since they inadvertently filled his pockets with bucket loads of money.
In fact, another big winner from the wedding dance video was NBC. The video was so big that it was actually ridiculed and mocked on the season finale of the office. The office posted the largest single season finale of any prime time sitcom since the finale of Friends almost six years ago. Not as if the video produced the ratings, but they used the video for all of their commercials designated towards the finale of the Office. Meaning that the popularity behind the "Wedding Dance" video may transform some individuals who may otherwise not watch the show to somehow tune in, I guess there marketing effort worked.
Almost 51 million views later and still ticking, Chris Brown will "Forever" we laughing all the way to the bank and thanking the JK Wedding Dance Party, "Forever".
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