I recently read an article from the Wall Street Journal about Viral Video that instantly sparked some interest. It focused mainly around Judson Laipply, or as most would know him, the guy from “The Evolution of Dance” video. The article explains that when he uploaded his video on YouTube in the spring of 2006 he had little to no idea what a viral video was or the amount of success he was about to receive. Without any advertising at all the video spread across the Internet eventually reaching 100 million + views.

In Laipply’s own words he describes, “It was all just pure luck”, one of those word of mouth phenomenon’s that cannot be analyzed or mapped for future benefit. We all know in 2009, the likely hood of such a success story is beyond staggering. Possible, but your more probable to win the lottery or have the Leafs win the cup. Not only has the field of content increased beyond imagination, but also the process of marketing videos has expanded immensely past a simple upload. As a matter a fact, the article relates only uploading videos to YouTube without the aid of further marketing comparable to “dropping a grain of sand on the beach ” and hoping to have it discovered.

With the knowledge of this, Laipply moved forward with his next video releases “Evolution of Dance 2”, needless to say he took a far different approach. His first angle, find partnership, Laipply reached out and the sponsors answered overwhelmingly. His two major partners PeopleJam Inc. and Saveology.com have put fourth tens of thousands of dollars in marketing money to promote the upcoming viral sequel and pay such overhead as song rights.

Saveology, a company that advises people on finances and PeopleJam a self help company, have teamed with Laipply, himself a motivational speaker with the overall theme of self improvement and positive human spirit. With their product integration users are able to interact with various flash games and activities such as placing their head on Judson’s body among other Internet content.

Laipply knows the severity of his luck first time around and hopes to benefit from his new marketing techniques and something that most viral marketers don’t have from jump street. An extremely large following base! The video has been out since mid January and has close to 4 million hits. Coupled with the hype that it received on its countdown to launch it may very will be the best marketed Viral Video of all time.

It is quite evident as mentioned before on this vary blog that Viral Hope has gone the way of the Dodo and Viral Science is the wave of the future. If you want be successful you no longer only need great content, but it must be packaged with great marketing (SEO, building fan base etc…) and long-term commitment.

Well ok, maybe the Dodo reference is a little bleak, perhaps a better analogy would be the Siberian Tiger cause we’ve all seen one of those in the Zoo at least once and apparently there are only 200 left in the wild. Yeah think about it like that there are perhaps 200 great Viral Hopes left in the massive wild archives of Viral Science.

-Ty Huggins