We love viral marketing. Every time you e-mail the latest video of a Ford Sport Ka taking its revenge on a low-level pigeon attack, every time you point a friend towards the funniest website you’ve seen this week, you're taking part in a 21st Century phenomenon.
Viral marketing is powered by the age-old drive to share a good joke. If we something that amuses or intrigues us, we can't wait to e-mail it to our friends. Huge names like Volkswagen, Ford and MasterCard have all found the effectiveness of an advertising campaign that costs nothing to distribute. You'll see some of our favourites in the column to the right.
It's great fun putting together a viral campaign; it's a process of putting our heads together and coming up with ideas that fuel those e-mail chains that can go round the world in a matter of hours. It also takes balance – irresponsible marketing does your brand no favours at all. But between us we can come up with the campaigns that put you up there with the giants.
Our favourite virals
This is the most creative approach to car advertising we’ve ever seen (strong language)
Bad taste but great humour from Ford (not for animal lovers)
Old joke with new life. We love it (sexual references)
Supply chain gang
They didn't do a lot. Two quality control operatives who didn't operate very often. But Dave and Steve's minimalist commentary on watching the shoes go by had record numbers signing up for the next episode and each new strip took thousands of e-mail trips around the world. And we had some great giggles thinking up the storylines...
Really Pants Award
How do you make men's underwear interesting? OK, don't answer that. Our approach was to invent the Really Pants Award. Participants were invited to nominate just about anything for an award, from Most Cynically Placed Speed Camera to Dumbest Presidential Comment, nothing was excluded. If you received a Really Pants Award by public vote you knew you'd been rumbled. And when you bought the brand, you were striking a blow for everything in this world that isn't pants.