Microsoft’s Zune, Jawbone cellphone headset, and Mountain Dew are just a few examples of corporate culture taking up the idea of viral marketing and running with it.

Zune Arts:

Zune Arts has been around for a little over two years, and has some really interesting videos, images, and music created by emerging artists all with the over-arching theme of “sharing is caring” an allusion to their “social” aspect of the Zune (being able to share songs with other Zune users for a few days).

http://www.zune-arts.net/

Jawbone Films:

Jawbone went a decidedly different direction, rather than having a group of different artists create their content, they hired director Sam Bayer to direct 4 different short films all with the same general principal: “Jawbone eliminates noise.” While these are much more cohesive they don’t have the same originality as the Zune Arts spots (in three out of the four shorts, “eliminate” equals the violent murder of the source of the noise). However, these shorts are generally much more edgy and unexpected, a big part of viral success.

http://www.jawbonefilms.com/

Green Label Art:

Mountain Dew’s campaign is decidedly less viral than the other examples but I couldn’t leave it out because I think they are doing more innovative and provocative things. They rounded up 7 fringe artist and commissioned them to create art for 6 limited edition bottles (I believe this is the second set of 6). The thing that makes this campaign interesting to me is that they chose truly fringe artists not just safe “corporate” fringe like Marc Ecko but actual graffiti artists, tattooists, and skateboarders.

http://www.greenlabelart.com/