Making Viral Work

To promote his new album release last summer, rapper Eminem (of Detroit, Mich.) teamed up with the ShamWow spokesperson, Vince Shlomi, to create a viral marketing video, posing as an infomercial for Recovery (the album).

In order to stand out against the buzz that had been surrounding other upcoming releases from artists like Katy Perry and Drake, this trick Eminem pulled out of his sleeve was just the push his album needed to generate a lot of buzz (and shoot the disc to the top of the charts).

Did it ever. Recovery turned out to be the first album in two years to sell more than 700,000 (hard) copies its first week out and landed the rapper his sixth straight No. 1 album.