Design Studies: What Came First, The Viral Or Design?

While YouTubing my weekend away as it's too dark and miserable outside to contemplate socialising, I came across this:

It's everything I've been looking for. It's for The Conran Shop, and it's a Viral advert that promotes designers.

Rubber Republic are a UK based company, whose sister site - Viral Ad Networks - provide viral marketing. Above is an example of their work. 

Established in 2001 they have gathered quite an extensive and impressive list of clientele; including the likes of Channel 4, Nokia, Hewlett Packard, O2 and PlayStation.  They "seed" your campaign online, by "infecting" popular pages - so to speak. For example, they may post links in forums based around a similar topic, where people who tend to read the related threads would then click on the video out of curiosity.

They also have a blog, which I from now on will be following as I'm hooked! 

Below is another good example, by Viral Agency for FedEx:

I initially selected this topic as a derivative from the Airwalk Casestudy, which was brought up in The Tipping Point, where Lambesis came up with a marketing strategy to promote Airwalk in an entirely new radical way. I have since researched into this, and intend to research further, with respect to deriving how viral ads can aid design. So far, from the examples I have shown here in my blog, and from the many, many more examples I have seen myself, I am currently at the conclusion that viral marketing can promote any product or service. This means means it is suitable for design, as some design is in the form of a product ( product design, textiles, jewellery, etc.), whereas other aspects of design come in the form of a service (architecture, interior design etc.).

What I have also come to realise however, is that viral marketing itself is in fact - design. It can be film. It can be graphic design. It can be an installation. It can be a product itself that gets distributed to promote something entirely different. 

It's limitless and infinite, and I fear I have only touched on the tip of the iceberg!