“Viral” is a huge buzz word these days, and corporations have caught on to what used to be reserved for embarrassing childhood memories or random fun with your tiny dog. It seems like a magic marketing formula; make a low-cost, easily produced video and bam! Get one million views and score thousands in sales (with a HUGE ROI) overnight.

There are, however, some big flaws in this thinking. There’s often no way of knowing whether or not a piece of content will catch on, and even if it does, it’s difficult to link to your brand or convert the buzz into customers or followers.

Jordan Cooper explains on Copyblogger why viral content becomes so popular: “Content goes viral simply because it’s as fun (or even more fun) to share than it was to originally consume.”

I did an interview via email with Beth Colla of the LA based mobile Lake Street Creamery about her accidental viral sensation that she posted on Youtube June 11th. Beth and Tim’s cat had kittens, they put a tiny hat on the kitten, and they were filming when this tragic kitty slap occurred:

Within a week, the Huffington Post and Dlisted had picked it up, and the video had topped 100,000 views. Five days later, Beth and Tim posted this adorable commercial for Lake Street Creamery, staring the same ill-treated kitten:

“I had no idea [the slap video] would go viral the way it did, but I did recognize how funny and sad it was,” says Beth “Once it started going viral so quickly Tim and I immediately decided to make a commercial for our brand new ice cream business.  We were literally days away from launching and thought why not tap into this new audience we seem to have captivated?  The slap got the attention and people wanted to see more, they just didn’t know they were going to hear about Lake Street Creamery too.  We made a cute commercial showing Scout Jr. was ok and got a treat and tied it into the Lake Street Creamery.”

Beth and Tim did everything right, they acted fast on their viral video sensation, and they tied the commercial really well to their viral video: same kitten, same hat, and if you listen carefully you can hear the same kitten wale towards the end of the video. They took an accidental incident and parlayed it into their brand image by attaching it to their their ice cream business.

Beth says that the video has translated into a lot more awareness of their brand: “We are getting a huge amount of attention from the video. People are aware of us, even before we were selling our product… people are coming to find us because they have heard of us, and they are discovering that we have some damn tasty ice cream too.”

Still Beth warns that intentionally creating a viral video may be more difficult than it looks: “I don’t know if you can create a viral video, I mean it’s one of those fluke things I think. But if you tried to plan it, it would probably need to encompass a lot of different emotions to appeal to a wide variety of people, and cause some controversy, also keep it short”

Next week I’ll be doing a follow up post about instructional videos. While they may not catch as quickly as something like the kitty slap, they have the potential to pull in new customers, and create more brand awareness. Stay tuned for that!

You can follow Lake Street Creamery on Twitter to track down their delicious ice cream. Many thanks to Beth for the interview!