Go Viral: Office Depot and the Recession Aggression Bag

If you spend any amount of time on sites like Hulu or YouTube, you may have come across this clever new ad targeting small business owners. Advertising the "Recession Aggression Bag," a phony bean-bag style product that a small business owner can physically abuse and verbally demean to feel better about the economy, the ad does no promotion of Office Depot until you visit the intriguing URL promoted at the end of the ad: thesurvivalofthesmartest.com.

Click past the break for the full video.

While it may not seem like much, the entire segment is intended to entertain the viewer enough that they'll continue with a conversion action and visit the Survival of the Smartest website. There, the visitor will find a good deal of small business resources that Office Depot is supplying to aid small businesses in the recession, as well as information about their current contest.

What's great about this Office Depot example is that it's textbook viral marketing, and it works. Create a video or mini-site that is relevant and highly targeted to your audience, but entertains first. Publish it to a social platform. Once the viewer has taken in the interesting or compelling message (particularly one that uses humor), they're much more likely to convert to an action, in this case visiting a URL presented at the end of the segment, or in the case of some TV and other media a URL mentioned in dialogue by a character in the piece.

Once you know you have their attention, you can hit them with a message of broader scope. For Office Depot, it's letting their small business audience know that they're a helpful resource, and that on the Survival of the Smartest site, they're not there to hard sell Office Depot products but instead provide special promotions and savings for their potential customer.

Have you seen interesting examples of viral marketing lately? Leave a comment below, tweet, or email me your thoughts about viral marketing and how you're thinking of using it for your business!