E-marketer posted an article on the mechanics of how a viral video is spread yesterday, you can read it here. It turns out that the most effective way to get someone to watch an online video is to get their friends to tell them to.

Distributing a viral and making it a success is something of a dark art, sure you can seed it in the right places but nothing beats a personal recommendation. After all – The JK Wedding was not seeded, it got an extra bounce when a couple of celebrities started talking about it but the main way that it spread is simply by people talking about it.

The trick that marketers hope to repeat is to get people talking about a video in a way that builds their brand values into the viral. This is a current campaign for TDC in Denmark that our partners GoViral are running. It really doesn’t matter if you can’t speak Danish – it is funny and makes people want to watch, it is obviously an ad and the mechanics are in place to make it easy to spread and share. Have a watch – see what you think and if the mood takes you – go ahead and send it to your friends by clicking the ‘del film’ button. Danish bacon may never seem the same again.