Creating Viral Video for Business Washington DC

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Originally published at Internet.com

A viral video is one that's shared from viewer to viewer, personally recommended because it's so funny, so gross, or so amazing for some other reason. We're now in the age of viral video, as sites like YouTube and Break.com let people post their own videos and, more importantly, view, rate, and comment on other people's work.

The trick for people creating online video for business is to harness the pass-along power of viral videos to get their company's message out there. To discover how one firm did it, we spoke to the comedy team of Barats and Bereta.

Luke Barats and Joe Bereta met while students at Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington. They began by creating short videos to amuse their friends and posting them to their own site. Before long, they were YouTube sensations.

In early 2006, David Thielen, the CEO and founder of Windward Reports, a company that makes reporting software for developers, had the idea to hire popular viral video makers to create videos for the company. Windward gave Barats and Bereta almost complete creative freedom, only requiring that the video say the name of the company once and that it be funny.

At the time, Barats and Bereta had graduated from Gonzaga and were working at a video production company in Spokane, creating commercials for local businesses and shooting their own videos on the side.

"It's never really been our intent to make money from the videos we do on the Internet," says Barats, but they liked the freedom of the Windward project. Since they worked in commercial production, they knew what it was like to work with clients who demanded a lot of creative input.

"The people at Windward were very open and trusting," says Barats. "The result is a video we consider one of the best we've ever done."

They created a short called "Cubicle War 2006," showing the interoffice trouble two developers get in when they don't have enough work to keep them busy (because Windward Reports has made their days so easy). It's a simple idea, and it let the pair perform the kind of creative, physical comedy they're known for.

"It's an advertisement, but it's not overbearing," says Barats. "The company only wanted the product name dropped once, and it didn't need it to be the focus."

"There was great feedback," once the work went live, says Bereta. "Cubicle War 2006" has now been viewed over a million times.

The people at Windward Reports are thrilled with the video's success. "Cubicle War 2006" was so popular in its first 24 hours that it maxed out the entire colocation facility where it was being served; not just one server, but the whole facility.

"It was so maxed out, we actually couldn't reboot it remotely, but had to drive to the facility," says Lisa Harris, Windward's VP of Marketing. The video had 66,000 requests in the first 24-hours, in July, 2006.

After that, the company posted the video on YouTube, and its popularity kept growing.

While it would be hard for most companies to allow the kind of freedom that Windward did, Harris sees it as crucial to the video's success.

"The general idea was that the more restraints you place on [the video makers], the more it will come out sounding like an ad, and the less interesting it will be to the developers we're trying to entertain," Harris says.

But has the video helped spur sales? Harris admits that there's no way to certain. Sales haven't increased dramatically since the video went live, and no one who's purchased the product has said that they did so because of the video. But over a million peoople have now heard of the company.

Windward was so pleased with the results that it's now sponsoring a video contest with the same creative freedom. The top prize is $10,000. The entries are currently hosted on YouTube and linked to from the Windward site (go to the contest page and click the upload link at the bottom of the page).

While it was a good experience, Barats and Bereta don't plan on making many more corporate videos. That's because the two have been signed to a one-year development deal by NBC, and are in the middle of writing and starring in their own sit-com pilot.

That's a good lesson for people creating viral video for business: when you have a hit, you're not only selling the product, but also selling yourself and your talents. You never know who's watching.