Embed The Entire Campaign Message In A Viral?

Today I came across an remarkable viral video from Samsung in which they do some awesome things with a herd of sheeps and LED lights. The viral kept spinning in my head. What will this do in terms of brand awareness? How high is the likability someone will go to the Samsung LED action page after seeing this viral video? Will the entertainment value be high enough to actively engage the viewer to visit the Samsung LED page?

For a change, not an in-depth case study of a social media strategy from my side. In this post I’d like to outlay a little question. Could you help me and share your opinion / expertise?

I hope that this viral video from Samsung is a part of an entire campaign. I come across many cases in which a viral video is the campaign by itself. Or worse – an client calls with the message they want to drop the original media strategy and only launch a big budget viral video. No support, no further campaign and no further information displayed somewhere else. Just big explosions, big fancy cars and high expensive visuals to entertain and create some brand awareness or to stimulate another goal in terms of traffic to the info page. Waste of money if you ask me.

Statement: Viral video’s should only be used as a part of a campaign – an entire brand message can not be delivered in just one (entertaining) video. If a brand’s message or campaign message does get to be communicated entirely, people will value it to commercial and won’t pass it along – gone is the viral effect.

What do you think about this statement? I haven’t seen any more media assets from Samsung on this campaign – yet. But what if it stays like this? Will it deliver the message clearly? Will the click through rate be high enough, considering the goals of this campaign? Probably not. I could be totally wrong about this case because I might not be the target group so I haven’t been communicated to. But I know how hard it is to virally push any kind of asset and that the best results come from an asset that has been embedded by a total campaign.

Are virals capable of delivering an entire message or can they be seen as just a way to drive traffic to another source and create campaign awareness? I’d love to see your opinion on this one in the comments!