How much does it cost to reach 45 million adult viewers on national television? About $917,300. How much did it cost Unilever to get 45 million views on this Axe viral video? Nuttin’ honey. How long did it take? About 2 months. How much did the production cost? We’re not sure, but it probably cost a bit more because it was 2:30 minutes long vs. the typical 30 second broadcast spot. Yet certainly not $917,000 more.

All these metrics look great, don’t they? But the biggest difference is not the cost, the savings, the reach, the time frame or the production. The biggest difference with this viral video is exactly that – it was all viral. People sent it to friends, showed it to family, and looked for it on their own. It wasn’t pushed into their personal media space. It was pulled into the viewer’s world by the viewer. How much would you pay to have 45 million people want to see your commercial?

Oh, yes, and the ultimate measurement: Unilever attributed a 22% increase in website activity and a 6% increase in sales while this viral video was running wild online. They called this a strong success.

What makes some viral videos generate millions of online views while others, often appearing to be equally well thought out, are left in the dust?  It centers around knowing your audience and offering them one or more emotions that stirs them into action. It causes them to want to share and want to buy.  Laughter, tenderness, fear, shock, even disgust, works if you’re directing the appropriate emotion to the appropriate audience with the appropriate retail message.  (Toss in a dash of surprise and you’re even better off!) In short, the success is in the IDEA. The question is, which advertisers are willing to re-think their agency/client compensation and pay well for a great IDEA?

Wrong.

There’s no question that a company’s website is still it’s most powerful marketing tool. You own it, you control 100% of it’s content, you manage its destiny. Your Facebook page? Well, ask Mr. Zuckerberg what he’s thinking of next and that’s what your Facebook page will look, feel and behave like next month. Your YouTube channel? Have you ever gotten into its content management system? Nope. And it’s the same with most of the other marketing tools we mentioned. Today you need a great website more than ever.

In fact, there is even more opportunity for today’s corporate websites to drive business straight to your doorstep. But you still have to start by focusing on your brand.  Forrester Research says 67% of today’s customers create their initial opinion of a company via their corporate website. This is the classic branding part of marketing, where you build trust with your consumer.  But a well-designed website can also take your potential customer into the actual sales process at the right place and right time. A website that’s been designed to offer both a brand and retail message has proven to be stickier, with more time spent browsing through pages, clicking additional links and converting to leads or online sales. Look at Home Depot, Wahoos Fish Taco and Morgan Stanley for a few good examples. They have places within their sites where their call-to-action request is not only appropriate, but expected.

So then, what do you do with your other marketing tools like Facebook pages, Twitter accounts, YouTube channels and Flickr? Simple. Use them to create conversations. Get people (aka customers and potential customers) talking to you, about you, and for you. Sure, you can include calls-to-action when appropriate. But mix them up. Remember, people don’t want to be sold – but they love to buy from companies they trust. Build your website with this in mind and you’ll be on the right path to online marketing success.

Recognize this guy? He’s “The man your man could smell like” from the Old Spice campaign that launched during this year’s Superbowl. Now, with over 11 million views and 20,000 consumer comments on You Tube, this campaign is the ad industry’s year-to-date darling, winning Clios and dozens of other creative awards. This Old Spice manly man also ambushed YouTube for two days this month, posting over 200 instantaneous videos responding to Twitter requests from the likes of Ellen DeGeneres and Perez Hilton. The campaign was owning both Twitter and YouTube like no other campaign has done yet.

Wow. Quite a marketing success, right? Wrong.

Sales of Old Spice’s Red Zone After Hours Body Wash, the product in the commercials, have dropped 7% in the last 52 weeks. Ad critics are blaming the confusion of who our Old Spice manly man’s message is targeting. Is it the ladies who giggle and gawk at him, or the men who want ladies to giggle and gawk at them?

It doesn’t matter. Because that’s not where the campaign went wrong. In fact, the campaign didn’t go wrong at all. The client went wrong. So often this happens when you have great creatives like Wieden and Kennedy, where the client (P&G) gets so caught up in the creative, they think it will make up for a weak product.

Any adult male who knows what Old Spice is, probably still relates the smell to his grandfather. It’s a 73 year old brand that people still think smells like a 73 year old brand. Maybe P&G hoped women would go out and buy one Red Zone After Hours Body Wash as a joke for their boyfriend or husband. That could create a few million extra sales – once. But think about it, what guy really wants to be a repeat buyer of a product that reminds him of his grandfather. Worse yet, a product that sends the message, “I want to be a manly man.” Come on. There’s a saying in advertising: “The fastest way to kill a campaign is by doing great creative for a bad product.” This may be the case for Old Spice.

P.S. Selfishly, we hope sales pick up. The spots are hilarious.

Believe it or not, there was a time before television. Radio was the broadcast media, and audiences found live radio ads just as ear-catching as the programs they sponsored. When TV programs started around 1940, most advertisers took what they knew from successful radio creative and tried like the devil to paste it into TV ads. Oops.

It took a few years for technology to align with creativity, but alas we finally saw the last of singing Texaco gas station attendants and Old Gold dancing cigarette boxes. Agencies and brand managers finally realized TV viewers wanted something completely different in a television ad. Good radio creative required theater of the mind, but good TV creative required doing the mental work for the viewer.

Fast forward to 2015. Here’s what you’ll probably read…

Believe it or not, there was a time before the internet when broadcast TV ruled media, and audiences found good TV ads just as enjoyable as the programs they sponsored. When digital advertising started around 1990, most advertisers took what they knew from successful TV creative and tried like the devil to paste it into online ads. Oops.

It took a few years for technology to align with creativity, but alas we finally saw the last of the :30 second one-way interaction commercials that had been cut and paste from TV to online. Advertising agencies and their clients finally realized online viewers wanted something completely different in an online ad. Good TV required doing the mental work for the viewer, but good online creative required involving the viewer. (Think World of Warcraft)

Check back in five years and see if we were right.

The on-demand web video site Hulu announced a new subscription service Tuesday called Hulu Plus, which will allow users to unlock full seasons of premium shows on ABC, NBC and FOX across a variety of new platforms for a flat monthly fee of $9.99. This includes a growing library of 120 seasons of TV and 2,000 episodes, according to Hulu.

While the business world debates Hulu’s business model, we marketers are looking at it as one more significant move that will put television as we know it in the grave. Especially because Hulu is offering its new service in mobile formats on the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch, as well as select Samsung internet-enabled TVs and Blu-Ray players. It will also soon offer Hulu Plus service on PlayStation 3 and X-Box 360, as well as devices from Sony and Vuzio.

Advertising space will continue to be sold, which means Hulu is adopting Cable TV’s strategy of collecting fees from both advertisers and subscribers. But advertisers will soon be able to geo-target specific messages to specific audiences in specific areas making their ad dollars much more cost-effective. And millions of people have already said they’re willing to pay $9.99 a month in order to watch almost any show they want anywhere, anytime, on any media player.

But don’t throw your TV set away. After all, antique shops are always looking for classic oldies. Your 72″ screen may someday become a valuable relic.

Since its inception, the Nordstrom brand has centered around being helpful, right? Like a phone call telling you they remembered you were looking for shoes to go with the suit you bought last month, and they just got the perfect pair in. Or how about the American Express openforum.com, a free website with tons of information that claims huge success in helping business owners succeed. Oh, and its content contributors are donating their brains and talent at no charge to American Express.

It’s easy to talk about big brands like these, but how about the success some smaller brands are enjoying due to their helpfulness? Like Kellogg Garden Products, with a website full of gardening tips from soil calculators to fun kid gardening activities. Their website Analytics show a huge percentage of visitors time being spent on the pages they’ve built simply to be helpful, and their brand recognition confirms this.

Big or small, these brands understand they must give in order to receive. Paying it forward may end up being the most successful marketing mantra for the 21st Century. The question is, is your brand ready?

You get to work in the morning and your email in-box awaits you with several dozen messages. Since time is your most precious commodity, you glance through the list quickly to find those you must read and respond to. The rest, especially the ones you didn’t ask for, or the ones you subscribed to so long ago that you forgot you ever signed up for them, are a nuisance. If you had the time you would unsubscribe, but that’s never as easy as it sounds.

When you get home from work you open your regular old mailbox. It, too, is filled with messages you didn’t ask for from marketers you don’t know. They may or may not get your attention, but the fact that they are in your mailbox does not feel like the invasion of your privacy that you felt when you found this stuff in your email in-box, right?

You expect to receive advertising messages in your regular mailbox. You’ve gotten them for years. You might not read the marketing piece, but when you see the brand’s name on the mailer you don’t think ill of it because it went into your mailbox. But you did with the ones in your email, didn’t you?

If we marketers continue to focus on building trust with the consumer, we have to think about this piece of the puzzle. Don’t intrude where you’re not welcomed. Don’t make a marketing decision just because it’s inexpensive. It could end up being much more costly to your brand than you ever imagined.

Remember the days when you had a best friend, and then maybe 5 or 6 other close friends? That circle was enough, wasn’t it? Spending quality time with them was usually very rewarding.

Now we move to the digital age. Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, LinkedIn and others, where popularity is based on the number of friends, connections, how many people “like” you or your business, or how many places you’re the “Mayor”. And heaven forbid if you show only a few!

Obviously it’s easier to have more friends these days. And easier to stay in touch. For one thing, you can talk to all of them at the same time via most of these social media tools. And it doesn’t matter where they are. Heck, it doesn’t even matter what language they speak because Google will translate it with one simple click.

But, what’s happening to the quality of friendships? Quantity is often forced to replace quality in the digital world unless you want everyone in your growing circle to know the finite details of your life that you might otherwise only share with a few close confidants.

Time will tell how this new world of mass-connections pays off. No one can say at this point. But we do know that society is changing because of this technology. What we need to remember along the way is that it’s a choice we make, not a mandate.

Most people know what OnStar is. Or even Lo-Jack. They’re computer and satellite driven resources that know how to find your car in case of trouble. Take that concept and put it on your mobile phone. Then look at your phone as having the capability of being OnStar or Lo-Jack headquarters, where you can see where everyone in your network is. Real time.

But say you have a lot of friends. And you only want to know where those geographically closest to you are. Just use your phone to “check-in”, sharing where you are (i.e. Kung Pao China Buffet). The technology Foursquare offers lets your friends see that you’re there. You can also see which of your friends are there, or at another place close by. Like maybe within four square blocks of where you are. Get it?

Then get the restaurants, movie theaters and retail stores involved and allow them the opportunity to entice you in. They’ll offer free food, special coupons, and even ego-centric virtual power trips like making you the “Mayor of Kung Pao China Buffet” with extra little perks. All because you frequent that establishment more often (or just first). There’s more to it, but this is enough to give you what you should probably understand.

So, who cares you ask? For now, only about 2% of America. But think about the implications of this technology being at everyone’s fingertips. Very Big Brotherish, but also very convenient. Now, think about what will happen when Facebook takes it and runs with it, which they intend to do very, very soon.

Stand by. It’s only just begun.

Now, replace this office space design process with your website development process. These days, there’s not much difference. You’re just replacing tangible brick and mortar with virtual space. But if you consider which of these walls and roofs more people visit, you’ve figured out the true value of your website.

So back up for a moment and ask yourself, “How much am I willing to pay for experts who know how to turn a cookie-cutter office space into my company’s brand?” Chances are good you’re willing to pay more than a few dollars. So, why, when your website is your opportunity to show your unique brand, would you settle for one that has nothing unique?

Interesting paradox, huh? Websites are much less expensive to build than they were just a few short years ago, but if you want to make yours stand out, to represent your brand and do a big part your selling for you, you’re going to have to pay for some real experts. Not just programmers who know html, php and css, but designers and brand strategists who know how to represent your best assets online. And writers who know how to take the hundreds of keywords necessary to help your site show up well in search results, and incorporate them into enticing content that flows seamlessly.

Websites like this are not just necessary for e-commerce businesses, they’re imperative for any business that wants to take advantage of the wonderful benefits the web has to offer your brand. It’s a new way of thinking, isn’t it?