Yes, the Doritos and Bud commercials during the Super Bowl were great this year, as usual, and we especially loved the VW commercial featuring the mini-Darth Vader. But let’s face it: No matter how clever, funny, or sentimental your own Super Bowl ad might be, small business owners and entrepreneurs cannot afford to spend $3 million for a 30 second ad that costs God knows how much just to produce and that you hope your target market will notice and remember.
A viral video, on the other hand, allows you to have fun, market your company, and reach a lot of potential customers while spending something far from a small fortune. Just look at what Network Solutions did this year with their hilarious Go Granny Girl parody video that features the fabulous Cloris Leachman. If you haven’t seen it yet, take a look at the Network Solutions Go Granny video.
Viral videos are the new advertising campaign. As DVRs allow us to skip TV commercials, satellite radio and MP3 players become our new radio stations, print ads go the way of print newspapers, and billboards and direct mail increasingly becomes a lot of white noise, viral, grassroots videos that are distributed via social media will increasingly play a more prominent role in advertising, and this is great news for small business owners.
Any small business or company can create and distribute a viral video. All you need is a flip camera, a presence on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, and the time to write, direct, and edit the video. Voila! You have a commercial at a fraction of the cost of a TV commercial that—and this is key—you can send to your target audience.
So while it is great fun to discuss and vote for mainstream Super Bowl commercials, maybe you should pipe up, vote for Go Granny, and send a message to advertisers that they ought to keep their eye on the viral videos. Not only are they the future of advertising, but they are the future of advertising for small businesses.
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