In our industry, we often assume “viral” means a really digital.  While viral usual will end up digital…it doesn’t have to start out that way.  I was watching the Big Ten tournament (Boiler Up) this past weekend and saw a commercial from Honda about the “Musical Road Experiment.”

I’m paraphrasing this, but here is the gist.  You’re driving down the road and hit those groves that wake you up when you are falling asleep at the wheel and they make noise, right?  Well, what if you ran over a road with those same groves, but cut so that it plays a song?  Welcome to the Honda Musical Road Experiment.  Check out the video below:

Ya….who wouldn’t love listening to the William Tell Overture while riding down the road?  The best part about THIS campaign is that it has taken on a whole new life of its own.  Looking at the latest Gatorade videos, they had a great viral life to them…but the video was spread around pretty much untouched (unless you count the re-mixes using the same video but with a different background music and/or voiceover).

Search for “musical road experiment” (have to use the quotes because YouTube) and look when Honda’s videos actually come up…it’s like 5th.  The rest of the videos are self-made home movies talking about the road.    Sometimes the best content is the video itself (take Ball Girl by Gatorade or Kobe’s Nike Stuff), but you don’t need a high dollar production company or a pro-athlete to get your brand to go viral.  Honda put something in place that allowed everyone to take part in the production….not just pass the video around to their friends.   Viral isn’t about the brand but about the coolness and uniqueness of the idea.  We are many moons removed from the ball girl or Kobe jumping over a car…and the viral campaign has since diminished.  However, Honda created something that will stay as a reminder until the road needs to be repaired (if the roads are anything like here in Chicago, then that will 2 months after they finished the project…but that’s another story).  Viral has to be cool, but doesn’t have to start online.   If it’s cool enough then it will end up there anyway.