Six years ago, ad executive Ed Robinson carried out an experiment. He spent $10,000 to
produce a humorous video about a man who meets an explosive end while inflating a child’s raft. He
attached his firm’s Web address to the clip and emailed it to five friends. Then he waited.
By the end of the week, more than 60,000 people had seen the twelve-second video.
Robinson says. The video had ‘gone viral’, passing from Robinson’s friends to their own friends and
from there, to blogs and sites across the Web. Within three months, Robinson’s Web site received
500,000 hits.
For Robinson, the traffic was confirmation that the video and others like it could create a
buzz and, in turn, make big bucks. ‘I was trying to prove a point: If you entertain your audience, they
will get it and the viral mechanisms will make the audience come to watch you.’