The very first time I saw it, I was hooked.

How could I not be?

A sweetly dorky guy in a white lab coat looks into the camera and asks, “Will it blend? That is the question!” Then some peppy music kicks in. Graphics start popping.

Before you know it, he’s dumping marbles into a blender.

And guess what? I found myself wondering — with an urgent, wide-eyed curiosity unthinkable only a few moments before:

“Will it blend?”

The entire demonstration lasted just a minute or so. The marbles turned to dust. It was cheap. It was cheesy. But it was memorable. And instantly I not only knew the product — the Blendtec blender — but also that I wanted to see more of it.

Millions of other people agreed.

Keep in mind: I hadn’t sought out the Blendtec site. I didn’t even know (at first) that I was watching a Blendtec advertisement. I’d never heard of Blendtec before. I wasn’t even in the market for a blender. All I knew was that a friend had sent me a video link with a promise I’d be glad if I checked it out.

I was.

And that’s what makes viral video marketing such an unbelievably powerful tool. When we watch TV and a block of commercials begins, we turn to passive mush. Even if we find a spot entertaining or funny, we’re just waiting for our program to resume. More than that, we’re very aware that we’re watching a thirty-second pitch to manipulate our consumption.

That’s not the case with the video pulsing across the Internet.

Viral marketing is seductive and self-sustaining. When something like Blendtec catches my eye, I can hardly wait to pass it along to family and friends and colleagues. It’s as though we’re hard wired with that instinct to be the first to share. And when we all feel that way, when we each want to be the first to share, the ‘virus’ spreads in a hurry.

Watching a Blendtec spot (and once you watch one, you want to watch more) might not make anyone run out to buy a blender. But it sticks in your head. When was the last time a blender manufacturer stuck in your head?

Remember those Coke & Mentos videos from a few years ago? They represented the other end of the spectrum – brand names that everyone already knew. But some ordinary people realized mixing the two products would have ‘explosive’ results perfect for YouTube. And so the Coke & Mentos fountain phenomenon (or “meme,” to use Internet parlance) took off. The way Coke leaps from its bottle when Mentos are added may not encourage anyone to buy them… but it does get you to think about Mentos in a whole new light, if only for a moment. It was fizzy and fun — and operated as marketing at absolutely no cost to the companies.

There’s a “Seinfeld” episode where George talks about how his personality quietly infiltrates his date’s subconscious like the catchy “By… Mennan” jingle. “Co… stan-za,” he intones.

Well, the same basic marketing principle at work there applies here. The most effective messages are the ones that stick with you when your guard is down. Maybe it’s a catchy jingle, especially back in George’s 1990s, when TV was still unchallenged as the dominant medium. But it could also be a video that sweeps up viewers who aren’t even thinking about it in “advertising” terms until long after they’ve sought the second or third or seventh version of it.

Blendtec and Mentos and many, many others are like the “Co… stan-za” of 2009 and beyond. They take advantage of a video ‘hook’ — blending an iPhone or propelling Coke a dozen feet into the air – and burrow into your mind.

Video will always attract eyes. Now it’s more affordable to make and distribute than ever before. And the demand for it has never been higher. Everything people crave from the Internet — instantaneousness, entertainment, procrastination, cultural shortcuts… video fulfills it all.

A great video doesn’t need to be long. It doesn’t need lots of resources. It just needs to be magnetic. It’s a powerful marriage of medium and message. Never before have so many eyes been so readily available.

Video flattens the playing field for smaller organizations. And you can integrate it into so many different aspects of your site. Give some thought to ways you can make your own message go viral.

Take a look at a couple of my favorite viral videos below. Which is your favorite? Are there any others we should have included?

Will it Blend?

Diet Coke & Mentos

Snowball the Dancing Cockatoo