Key Takeaways
- “Go viral” is a bad goal. Chasing views for their own sake tends to produce forgettable content. Aim instead for a video that genuinely resonates, and let virality be the bonus.
- The brand videos that break through tend to share a handful of traits: they’re short, they land an emotion (often humor), they surprise, they’re instantly recognizable, and they travel across platforms.
- Emotion is the engine of sharing. People pass along videos that make them feel something strongly enough to want a reaction from others.
- Distribution is a creative decision, not an afterthought. The biggest hits are cut and framed for the platforms where they’ll actually be watched.
- You can’t manufacture the cultural moment, but you can control the craft. Do the controllable things well and you tilt the odds in your favor.
Here’s an unpopular opinion to open with: your video’s goal should never be to go viral. Aim only for virality and you’ll usually end up with thin, try-hard content that misses the mark on everything else. The better goal is a video that earns real engagement, delights the people you made it for, and moves your business forward. If it also happens to catch fire, wonderful, but that’s the cherry, not the cake.
That said, plenty of brands have cracked the code often enough that it stops looking like pure chance. When you line up the brand videos that truly broke through, the same traits keep showing up. Below are eight of them, each illustrated by a video from a brand you’ll recognize, followed by a few more worth studying. None of this is a formula, because there isn’t one, but it’s a map of what tends to work.
1. Keep It Short
Name the last fifteen-minute video that swept the internet. Hard, isn’t it? The overwhelming majority of breakout videos are short, because brevity removes friction: you get the point fast and can watch almost anywhere. Old Spice proved a single 30-second spot could become a cultural event with “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like” in 2010, a breathless one-take that packed more turns than most action movies and helped vault the brand back to the top of its category. In today’s era of TikTok, Reels, and Shorts, the reward for brevity is even steeper, and nailing those crucial opening seconds matters more than ever. Our rundown of hooks that make short video work is a useful starting point.
2. Nail the Humor
Getting funny right is genuinely hard, which is exactly why it works when it lands. There’s no formula, just some hard-to-bottle mix of timing, cleverness, and self-awareness, and brands that try too hard tend to faceplant. The gold standard is still Dollar Shave Club’s 2012 launch film, “Our Blades Are Great,” in which founder Michael Dubin deadpans his way through a chaotic warehouse. It reportedly cost around $4,500, drew thousands of orders within a day, and has racked up tens of millions of views since. Four years later, Unilever bought the company for a reported $1 billion. The lesson isn’t “be cheap,” it’s that a sharp, genuinely funny idea can outperform a giant budget.
3. Build in a Surprise
An unexpected turn, reveal, or feat gives people a reason to lean in and, just as importantly, to tell someone else to watch. Volvo Trucks turned this into an all-timer with 2013’s “The Epic Split,” in which Jean-Claude Van Damme performs a serene split suspended between two reversing trucks. The sheer what-am-I-watching spectacle pulled in tens of millions of views within days, and the Enya track behind it re-entered the charts years after its release. You don’t need Van Damme, but you do need a moment the viewer didn’t see coming.
4. Trigger a Strong Emotion
Sharing is emotional before it’s rational. People pass along videos that make them feel something powerful enough to want others to feel it too, whether that’s joy, awe, or a lump in the throat. Dove’s “Real Beauty Sketches” (2013) moved millions by quietly showing women how harshly they describe themselves, and Always turned a playground phrase into a movement with “#LikeAGirl” (2014). Neither leans on a hard sell; both build an emotional truth the audience wants to spread. The same principle powers a great customer story told on camera: real feeling travels.
5. Make It Instantly Recognizable
The most shareable videos are identifiable within seconds, thanks to a distinctive, ownable creative device: a jingle, a character, a look, a catchphrase. Metro Trains Melbourne built one of the most recognizable public campaigns ever with “Dumb Ways to Die” (2012), whose sweetly morbid jelly-bean characters and impossibly catchy song made it the most-shared video of its year and spun off into a hit mobile game. Pick a single strong idea and commit to it completely rather than hedging across five.
6. Make It Easy to Share Everywhere
Video is inherently shareable, but with every platform favoring its own native formats, reach is now a design decision. The brands that spread widest cut versions built for where people actually watch: vertical for TikTok, Reels, and Shorts, horizontal for YouTube, each framed to work on mute or with sound. Google’s “Friends Furever” (2015), a simple montage of unlikely animal friendships, became one of the most-shared ads of its year largely because it was so effortless to pass along. Plan distribution while you plan the shoot, lean on a multi-channel approach with video at the center, tailor each cut to its social platform, and get more usable versions out of a single production.
7. Aim for Universal Appeal
Broad, human resonance is what carries a video across borders and feeds, and it’s also the hardest thing for brands to pull off, since branded content is rarely as universal as a laughing baby. The brands that manage it tap feelings everyone shares. Nike’s “You Can’t Stop Us” (2020) used a mesmerizing split-screen edit to link athletes across sports and circumstances under one idea of unity, and Apple’s “The Whole Working-From-Home Thing” (2020) mined the universally relatable chaos of lockdown work for warmth and laughs. The more people can see themselves in it, the further it goes.
8. Respect the Role of Timing and Luck
Here’s the humbling part: no matter how much you do right, there’s no guaranteed path to viral fame. A video still has to be caught by the right people at the right cultural moment, and that timing is largely outside your control. CeraVe’s 2024 Super Bowl run leaned into a wonderfully absurd rumor that actor Michael Cera makes the moisturizer, a gag that worked partly because the internet was primed for exactly that kind of bit. You can’t schedule a cultural moment, but you can control the craft, and doing the controllable things well is how you stay ready when luck shows up. It also helps to define what success actually means for you up front, so a video that doesn’t go viral can still clearly win.
A Few More Brand Videos Worth Studying
If you want a watchlist, these each nail several of the traits above and reward a close look:
The Farmer’s Dog, “Forever” (2023): a wordless, deeply emotional arc about a girl and her dog that many named the best ad of that year’s Super Bowl.
Coca-Cola’s long-running “Happiness” work: proof that making people feel good, then attaching your brand to that feeling, is a durable strategy.
Apple’s “Underdogs” series: comedic short films where the product genuinely drives the plot rather than sitting beside it.
As you watch, notice how none of them feels like an ad first. That’s the trait beneath all the others.
One Caution for the AI Era
With AI making it trivially easy to generate video, it’s tempting to treat volume as a shortcut to virality. It isn’t. Audiences and platforms alike are getting quicker at spotting hollow, generated content, and none of the traits above can be faked into existence. The videos that break through still come from a real idea and a genuine feeling.
Work with Lemonlight
Every video on this list started with a strong idea and the craft to pull it off. That’s the part you can actually control, and it’s what we do. Whether you’re chasing broad reach or a specific business result, we’d love to help you make something people genuinely want to watch and share. Get in touch and let’s talk through what you have in mind.
Frequently Asked Questions About Viral Videos
Can you make a video go viral on purpose?
Not reliably. You can stack the odds by building in the traits that shareable videos tend to share, like brevity, emotion, surprise, and easy distribution, but the final spark depends on timing and audience response you can’t fully control. That’s why chasing virality alone is a poor strategy, and making genuinely good content is a better one.
What do most viral brand videos have in common?
They tend to be short, emotionally resonant (often funny), surprising, instantly recognizable, easy to share across platforms, and broadly relatable. Above all, they rarely feel like a straightforward ad, which is what makes people want to pass them along.
Do viral videos actually help a business?
They can, when the attention connects to something real. Dollar Shave Club’s launch film helped build a company later sold for a reported $1 billion, and Old Spice’s campaign drove a major sales turnaround. But views without relevance or a clear next step rarely move the needle, so a strong idea should always sit on top of a strong strategy.
How long should a video be if I want it to be shareable?
Shorter is generally better. Many of the most-shared brand videos run from about 30 seconds to a couple of minutes, and short-form platforms reward even tighter cuts. Lead with your strongest moment, hold only as long as the idea earns, and stop.
Is it worth trying if I have a small budget?
Absolutely. Dollar Shave Club’s breakout film reportedly cost around $4,500. A clever, well-executed idea consistently beats an expensive but unremarkable one, so put your energy into the concept and the craft before the production budget.
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