Want to see Viral Marketing Perfection in action? Here’s a perfect example: Ben Folds is making an album of a cappella versions of their music to be performed by the best university groups they could find! The CD will consist of 12-15 songs chosen from the submissions made. I am currently a member of Queens College acapella group, Tizmoret, so I found myself very intrigued.

Their master-plan was actually motivated by a number of amazing university a cappella versions of their songs published on YouTube. All you have to do is post your video to YouTube and submit the link to the BenFolds.com/Acapella website. Then they’ll go ahead and provide links to the Youtube clips on Benfolds.com, MySpace and Facebook so everyone can see what they’re choosing from. It’s viral marketing to the max…encouraging the public to post their video on the top video publishing site and then linking it with the top 2 social networks in our space…and then linking all of that, back to BenFolds.com!

Oh…and to to top if off, proceeds from sales of the CD will go to a music education charity to be decided. Now that’s what I call good marketing and great PR!

…so if you’re looking into setting up a Viral Marketing campaign, use this as a guideline:

• Provide an incentive
• Make use of “Video”
• Spread your campaign across the 3 largest social networks and then link everything together.

At this point, my fingers are crossed and I hope we win! Check out Tizmoret’s Acapella version of Annie Waits:

Posted under Online Video, Viral Marketing