It was in November of 2006 that we posted the first viral video on RagingArtists.com.

As part of an initial Web Campaign for PF Flyers, SLAM (Sportie LA Media) created a two-minute video purporting to be a "lost casting tape" from Martin Scorsese's 1990 mob classic Goodfellas. It featured an actor auditioning for the Joe Pesci role, delivering the same lines as they might be performed by famous actors of the day, including Al Pacino, Dudley Moore, Sean Connery, and Pesci himself.  

We thought it would be interesting to chart the success of this endeavor, so we traveled to the unofficial SLAM office, in the bar at Raffles L'Ermitage in Beverly Hills, to speak with SLAM Marketing Director Justo Diaz:

Raging Artists: Thanks for inviting us to drinks, Justo.

Justo Diaz: Am I buying? Is that how this works?

RA: You're the one with the successful viral video.

JD: You know that doesn't make me rich. It gives me street cred...not much else.

RA: It also makes you smart. So you're the perfect person to tell us the criteria for a hit viral.

JD: There are too many ways to make a popular viral. The key to a viral's success, though, is to know what a viral is and what it can potentially do for a business. What distinguishes a Viral from a Web commercial or a Web video is the degree to which it makes an impact and spreads across the Web. In the case of this viral, we wanted to garner search positions for the terms Goodfellas Cast, Goodfellas Audition, and Goodfellas keywords in general. You see, we wanted our target audience to become familiar with the PF Flyers brand by connecting to a cultural icon that this demographic relates to. The Viral was so successful in this regard that - nearly two years later - if you type in Goodfellas Audition, you will get two Google pages full of different iterations of our video. The fact that this video garnered so many Goodfellas keyword positions on google is what made it a viral - in this case.

RA: It seems like many people measure viral success in terms of millions of hits - 

JD: Some virals get millions of hits - Will Ferrell's "The Landlord" video, for instance - and that is what makes them successful. The adage "any press is good press" applies to virals, and the more people who see them the better. However, a brand's goals and audience may be much more specific than the audience for a comedy video. What most successful virals have in common is that they appear to have little or no connection to the corporate message. That makes them appear to be real and not conjured up by marketers.

RA: Given the fact that many advertisers see creating commissioned content for the Web as a means of keeping costs down, how important is production value?

JD: Production value is actually important, but not in the way most people think. A viral needs to look dynamic, as if it was shot on the spot - without any preparation. It needs to feel "real". For instance, if you caught Britney Spears stealing a pair of sneakers, trampling an elderly person as she ran out the door, you would have a viral. Millions of people would tune in to watch this video because they would automatically assume it was real and shot with a camera phone. Now, if the sneakers she took were clearly Pumas or Nikes, then you might suspect that this is a commercial, but you would still watch, so a viral is what you would have. If the production quality was high, and its stamp sent you to corporate headquarters, you would lose the viral quality and it would just be a commercial. It would take a lot of money to get Miss Spears to steal a pair of Pumas, so production costs would be high, even if the quality was purposely low. In other words, production quality would not be important in this case, but the subject and environment are key components that may cost you some money.

RA: Speaking of budget, is it true that "Goodfellas Cast Party" was essentially shot on spec? 

JD: The project fell outside the scope of the planned campaign for PF, so there was no money for production or seeding. But I'd conceived the spot as a means of connecting with a specific demographic, and knew in advance that we would capture and own keywords that dealt with Goodfellas. I also knew in advance that our target demographic loved this movie and all things related to the movie. The success was a byproduct of design.

RA: So you pulled this off with very little money, but money is still important.

JD: Yeah, it's important. The Coke and Mentos viral was extremely inexpensive in terms of quality, but to orchestrate it well took time and energy. Still, in the end we are talking a fraction of the cost of a real commercial. In the case of Goodfellas, it had to look like it was on film in a real studio. Otherwise, people would not believe this was a real studio-produced audition tape. The sound and background were key elements that made it look and feel real. I guess what I'm saying is that production value may or may not be important. Realism is what you are after. The Goodfellas video looked good - it had to.

RA: So the fact that it looks good has helped the video build momentum over the last couple of years.

JD: Exactly, people continue to link to this video because the debate about whether it was real is still out there. That controversy is what powers the video. The links are what garner Google positions for Goodfellas keywords. Blogs often publish this video when talking about Goodfellas. Bloggers are more powerful than people realize, even now.