A brief recognition of the types of viral videos floating around the web with selected, recent examples.

First type is the “Your face here” viral video, spread most recently (after the stupid dancing elves) by a swedish “our hero” campaign.
Now this is very well made and it shows that a lot of money was put into the production of this viral, and that’s one of the reasons it’s so successful – it seems “real” when you see your own face on all those pictures inside the video. The technology makes it believable and that counts! Here’s the link : Great swedish Viral

The other type is the funky “Whoa! They did a great job” type of regular ads, that don’t try to pretend they’re not an ad. Instead they are so creative and innovative + just plain “new” that people send them out and about anyway. Here’s the most recent “Google Chrome ad video” :

Yet another type is “we know it’s an Ad for a respectable company, but look how stupid it is” and here we have a winner in form of the MSI slim laptops and showing they’re so thin you can catch one with your butt. Most consumers will probably think : Hey , are they showing us where their laptops belong? But all in all it does spread anyway. Here’s a preview :

Then there are those “not yet used ideas” like the guys jumping into pants. The pants are not branded (yet, cause I’m sure the idea will be bought by some major jeans company sooner or later). They did it as a trick and to show their skills, but the marketing value of it is pretty big if used properly. Here’s the video:
Update : I’ve heard that the idea was made into a commercial later on. 5 million youtube views does account for something.

Then there’s the lipdub (just type lip dub in youtube search and you’ll get millions of videos) but that’s not really a comercial thing that much. There are also weird, funny and / or stupid songs videos. The proud winner in that category is microsoft songsmith – which went viral in seconds after the release of the video. The song is so terrible that it spreads unbelievably fast. Oh and they use a mac during the video ;)

Update: And finally, almost forgot about it, there’s the wacky science, represented by mentos + diet coke “experiments”. Don’t forget your lab coats for such videos, that makes them more believable. ;)

But truly anything can be viral, not necessarily commercial in value. Any more ideas?