The viral video

What's the best way to promote a product? Word of mouth. Hands down. Publicists help make this happen because journalists are the best word of mouth authorities out there. Everyday, there's at least one news item or column that everybody is talking about. The web changes the way word of mouth works. Now you can spread information by word of mouth to people you don't actually know through Digg, Twitter, Facebook. And one of the stickiest, most viral sites of all: YouTube. Everybody wants to make a viral video. Remember the smash hit "Tea Partay," a music video where three well-scrubbed, upper-class New Englanders rap about finger sandwiches, croquet, and Smirnoff Raw Tea, a flavored malt beverage? Well, maybe you don't, but it's had almost 5 million views on YouTube. Smirnoff Vodka made the ad, but it didn't put it on YouTube. The company simply put it on one of its websites, and visitors loved it so much they put it up on YouTube themselves. How viral is that? Hadn't thought of making a video? You should. As if videos weren't already hot enough, their popularity is still increasing.

-Adrianne (@msfener)