I’m going to quote nothing here and make up some statistics for you to ingest - I’m guessing approximately 100% of you use Facebook or *shudder* the worst site ever to grace the festering sore filled Internet MySpace. You talk to friends, accept invitations from random hot chicks and quickly learn lessons in phishing, and get spammed with obvious, glaring in-your-face ads (”Find local girls in your area! We promise they’re not stock x-rated model photos!”) We can all see this and spend little time falling victim to their marketing. However, there’s a new face to the enemy, and it looks just like that guy you invited to your friends a few months ago. You know, the guy who gave you that recommendation about that sweet new Motorola phone; the one that didn’t get decent reception and was kind of flimsy, remember? Hey… dammit, that guy sucks balls.

Whether I say it’s good or bad, viral marketing is going to continue to exist, so I won’t say. Instead, I’m going to lay the facts out as impartially as a vaguely pseudo anti-conglomerate post-teenager can. It’s often annoying to experience, and since it’s usually placed in product review sites, it can be hard to distinguish it from the actual people who want to help. Soon, you stop trusting anyone and spend your days huddled in your basement apartment, wearing a tinfoi hat, clutching a stuffed rabbit in one hand and a shotgun in the other, muttering about how the “marketers can’t read your thoughts now.” I’m here to spare you from this life of Hot Pockets and sexual frustration with tales of viral marketing I actually like. Yeah, it’s as hard for me to believe, too.

• Cloverfield - This movie was alright in my books. Nothing spectacular that I’d buy the DVD for (before I found all of the backstory,) but an interesting take on the classic “giant monster” theme. I actually completely forgot about the movie until I was pointed towards the Cloverfield Wiki. Nothing overly attention-grabbing was found until I stumbled across the MySpace pages for the main characters of the movie - Rob Hawkins, Hudson “Hud” Platt, and Lily Ford, among others (You can just click their top friends to sift through the characters of the movie.) Going through the main character’s blog postings shows you he’s going to work for a soft drink company called “Slusho.” Comments in that same blog posting show Rob that he’s working for a subsidiary of Tagruato, an oil company that owns multiple oil platforms, one of which apparently awoke the monster from the movie. Whether an afterthought or not, the breadth and depth of the various media giving background and “realism” to the movie is impressive. It personally gives me a lot more respect for the film, and makes me want to see it again/buy the DVD (probably their goal, so I call it effective.)
• Beer Companies - This one’s huge, since practically every beer company that’s ever existed has done this. The most recent was Bud Light’s “Swear Jar” short. Others are going to be found all over the place, but generally, the Internet allows companies to skirt around the over-aggressive FCC regulations against sexuality and “bad language” in commercials, making them incredibly popular among the masses. I find them hilarious too, though I’m sure seeing the Reebok logo plastered every five seconds during the infamous “Terry Tate: Office Linebacker” videos isn’t good for my brain.
• Sony - If there’s ever a candidate for the first company to build an actual Death Star, Sony is it. While their infamous “All I Want For X-Mas Is A PSP” campaign backfired, and is now owned by an ice cream company for some reason, they can rest assured knowing they hired the guys that exposed viral marketing to the masses. And, at any rate, isn’t all publicity good publicity?

I’ve never had a serious problem with viral marketing, since we’ve been exposed to it our entire lives. I do want opinions from my fellow marketing peasants and serfs, though - what do you think of the pervasive product placement shoved down our throats, creative though it may be? Oh, and did I ever tell you about these great shoes I bought the other day…