Have you seen that video…

…where the lion hugs the guy who raised him as a cub? Or where the kid’s still dizzy after his trip to the dentist? Or even that video of the South Park episode where Canada goes on strike for the Internet’s money – the Internet has money, doesn’t it?  Well, does it?

Well if you haven’t seen those videos, it doesn’t really matter. What does matter is that people are talking about them.

Getting the word out there via sending the link to a friend, having a conversation about it at a bar, having a laugh at work. All of this does matter in the world of promotions, advertising, and marketing. So why aren’t more brands and companies making them?

Video content often gets a bad rap as they can be very costly to produce. Companies want to spend as little money as possible, so adding thousands of dollars to a marketing budget (especially in startlingly difficult economic times) can be daunting. However, the amazing technological strides digital video has made in the past decade greatly decreases the pricing bar for getting high quality produced content at a reasonable rate.

Right now, approximately 15% of videos actually go viral, but there are video gurus that have helpful insight into how to maximize the viral spread of videos and with websites like Tubemogul, you now can easily distribute videos over multiple UGC sites with the click of a button (*you need to create accounts on these UGC sites).

Film/video is the most powerful medium in marketing the web, broadcast TV, and elsewhere for its ability to set tone, control messaging goals, and reach larger audiences. Let’s face it, the amount of media that we consume is staggering. If we can grasp an entire message in under a minute in today’s day and age, that is an effective use of advertising dollars.

The economy really has given people cold feet, but if one stops seeing a brand over and over again, chances are they’re going to forget about it. Historically, the companies of the Great Depression that kept advertising budgets around the same dollar figure as prior to the stock market crash (or fairly relative), succeeded and survived the changes in the marketplace.

Let’s take a recent example of a major brand taking a stab at viral marketing. Ok, this one wasn’t cheap to make (as the talent was costly) – Nike’s ankle insurance commercial with Kobe Bryant - but what this video does do for Nike is that it allows the brand to have some fun, make something that WILL be talked about with a group of friends or sent in an email. Consumers welcome change because it excites them. Nike took a gamble with this one, and whether or not you like it almost doesn’t help or hurt the video, because in the end they tried something different and that alone is worth talking about.

People love a good story. A video that becomes a meme is a story that is told more rapidly and frequently. So why not get your story out there?

Whether you’re a part of a company, a brand, or just a start-up company that believes in itself, make a video about the work you do, what it means to you and get it to as many people as you possibly can. If the concept for the video is clever enough, there’s no end in sight to how many people may see it across the globe.

So next time you have those marketing and advertising budgets on your lap think about putting a portion of it into video creation. Tell your story and tell it well, because if you don’t someone else will.