In response to Jonathan Harrison’s blog post on using viral videos on the internet to market products, as they are rapidly shared by people to all of their friends and colleges is a great idea, but I see one problem with this type of marketing: creating the right type of video for it to be successfully viral is incredibly complex. Many videos hit the viral status, most recently Gangman Style, but when I think of a extremely popular viral video I immediately think of Rebecca Black’s “Friday” music video. There is no need to link the video as there is almost a 99% chance that you have seen it or know what happens in it. And that’s because it went viral, but for companies to copy this and get that type of viral awareness so that everyone knows who you are from one video can be very risky. Why?? Because many videos, such as Rebecca Black, get the unbelievable amounts of views due to the fact that everyone thinks they are awful and great for a laugh.

So, creating a video that can get the viral status but is actually enjoyed by the general public and not completely trashed is going to be extremely difficult for companies to do as they need to find the right mix of advertising with comedy, but not to the point that its hated but enough silliness in the video for it to go viral. I think that it would be very costly to conduct research to determine what would meet this requirement, and then all the money spent on the advertisement could possibly be a waste if it doesn’t go viral. In my opinion, I believe it would be better for companies to stick to more traditional forms of advertising (including bus stop ads, TV commercials  and social media marketing) as they have knowledge on what makes an effective advertisement, and leave going viral for people who have time to make those ridiculous videos to entertain the world and don’t care about the possible backlash they may receive from people.