To promote the fact that they're entirely customer-owned, Swedish insurance company Folksam has apparently started taking requests for ads from customers.

A new viral marketing campaign produced by ad agency Thinkmodo for AMC asks the question: "Could zombies live among us?"

These poor guys are so excited about finally finding a chick willing to strip on ChatRoulette! Don't they know there are no actual girls on the anonymous video chat site—only dongs and viral marketing for The Last Exorcism?

As Bret Michaels recovers from a brain hemorrhage that nearly killed him (and gears up for the Celebrity Apprentice finale), a nagging question keeps popping up online: "Was it all a publicity stunt?" Is nothing in public life believable, anymore?

You see a cool YouTube video of people running on water. It's called "liquid mountaineering," and you share it on Facebook and Twitter. Then you find out it was a viral marketing campaign. And you feel like a tool.

"Viral" ad campaigns: everybody's sick of them! What to do? Just think of a more appealing name for them. Because appearance, not reality, is what matters, and if you agree with that you just might have a future in advertising. "Viral" campaigns are now called "Dandelions," because they flutter beautifully across the…

Viral video may be dead, but that doesn't mean that the whole concept of the "viral" campaign has disappeared. It's just moved on to newer, more annoying creative formats. And now viral campaigns don't even need a corporate sponsor—agencies are doing them with the mere hope of attracting a corporate sponsor.…

This Schweppes ad became a YouTube hit. Why? Because its photography is beautiful. It shows something stunning and naturally draws people in. What it decidedly isn't is a crass attempt to "go viral" with some sort of shocking riff on a pop culture moment aimed a specific demographic group. Which is why we picked this…

It's been fun while it's lasted, but the monstrous creature that washed up in Montauk, Long Island may have been nothing more than a prop from an independent movie about carnies, and a viral marketing scheme just as everyone initially suspected. There are enough untied loose ends in the hoax storyline to leave open…

Kudos are in order to the public relations company that "tipped" us earlier today about the supposed government-created mutant that washed up in Montauk, if for nothing other than its timing. The firm, described by its owner as a purveyor of "grassroots viral marketing," was wise to try and place a campaign than in…

So that "Office Berserker" video we linked to last week—security camera footage purportedly showing a man going crazy at work and destroying his entire office, along with many of his coworkers—has been confirmed as another freaking viral marketing video (as suspected). This time the prankster was a Russian director…

The latest oppressive trends in viral marketing received a skeptical close-up this week in The Hollywood Reporter, but for sheer word-of-mouth fanboy horror, look no further than Tuesday's video chronicle of the Dark Knight "scavenger hunt"/wild geek goose chase through Hollywood. MTV sent an intern to do its dirty…

While we appreciate the earnest viral efforts of studio marketers on behalf of Cloverfield, The Dark Knight and even half-assed fare like Quarantine, there's a strangely revolting quality to the derisive, almost misogynist analog throwback accompanying the new Apatow Assembly Line comedy Forgetting Sarah Marshall.…

In a savvy bit of viral marketing set to reclaim Warner Bros.' Dark Knight campaign from the near-disaster of votive-and-flower-ready Why So Serious? multiplex displays, Batman fans are encouraged to stopwhatthey'redoingRIGHTNOW and allay their post-Ledger apprehensions at IBelieveinHarveyDent.com. There, Gotham…

When a presidential candidate puts her daughter on the hustings, they call it "pimping." But when a company sends a girl out looking for dates, we're supposed to call it a community service? That makes Cordarounds the pimp this Valentine's Day. In a viral marketing project titled "Karen the 13th," the…

When the concept of viral marketing first began circulating in the tech-boom '90s, it was, while still deceitful and annoying, at least more creative than it is today. You got the feeling that all those young web-friendly ad rats really put some thought into the funny little videos and games and stuff that they were…

Remember, fondly, the time when companies were moderately coy about viral marketing? When there was at least a small degree of modest subtlety involved in deceiving consumers? Those days are long gone, as demonstrated by this Monster ad by Blockbuster for a "Blog/Viral Mkt Manager." The ideal candidate shall: