Many marketing directors have given serious thought to launching a viral video campaign via YouTube, HowCast or any of the other online video channels available today. It’s an inexpensive way to generate awareness and interest in your product and service. (Side note: You can catch all of our 60 Second Videos on YouTube, HowCast and a bunch of other online video channels.)

There are two YouTube viral video campaigns we’ve blogged about recently. One is an Extended Stay Hotels campaign and the other is a Wii campaign.

Both used the same vehicle — YouTube — to get people talking about their products. But one of them succeeded and one of them failed miserably.

Which one succeeded? The Wii spot, which does a fabulous job of engaging the viewer in an uplifting, fun online experience. The net result, after watching the spot, is a positive one. Viewers complete the experience by saying, “Cool! That was awesome!”

(Okay, correction, viewers under the age of 21 say, “Cool! That was awesome!” The rest of us use different language, but you get our point.)

You can check out the Will spot by clicking here.

On the other hand, there’s the Extended Stay Hotels campaign which ends with a young lady licking the toilet at one of their hotels. We’re not kidding. She licks the toilet to show that the hotels are clean.

The spot was so offensive that it was recently pulled from YouTube by the hotel chain. We’re sure the Winston-Salem, N.C. office of Mullen, who, according to AdAge, created the campaign, tracked YouTube hits, and we’re sure they were huge, but if you get to the end of a YouTube commercial and say, “Ewwwwww!” instead of “Cool!” then you’ve done yourself a disservice.

How did Extended Stay allow this to happen? If we were to guess, there was a young, wippersnapper team of creatives who have won a bunch of awards for edgy, outrageous work. They probably mentioned their award-winning campaigns that “built awareness” for other clients just prior to presenting the storyboards to the Extended Stay marketing team.

And you know what? The truth is, there’s definitely a place for edgy, outrageous work. If you get it right, you can increase mindshare exponentially, which ultimately translates to sales. But that’s the trick — you have to get it right.

In the case of Extended Stay hotels, they got it wrong. In a big way

Here’s an insiders trick: If you’re a marketing director and you have a hip, young creative team presenting edgy, outrageous work, there’s a simple test to see if you should approve it.

At the end of the spot, if you say, “Ewwwwww!” then kill it. If you say, “Cool,” then have at it.

There’s a lot to be gained by doing work that breaks through the clutter. But doing work that’s groundbreaking is a little like investing in a start-up — there’s a pretty good chance you’re going to fail, but if you don’t fail, you just might hit a grand-slam home run.

Using the 60 Second Marketer “Ewwwww!” test is a simple, yet effective, way to tell if a groundbreaking spot has a chance to grow sales and revenue. Give it a try next time you’re facing a young team of wippersnapper creatives.

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