As CEO, Easter has led NeboWeb to explosive growth, attracting Fortune 500 clients and driving strategic partnerships which have fueled NeboWeb’s expansion. He is well-known in the interactive marketing industry and frequently speaks about capturing the power and potential of online marketing.

The holiday season always fuels B2C growth, and while this season may be a bit slower, the ability to make an impact may be more important than ever. From the famous Coca-Cola holiday soda can, to the ribbon on top of a new Lexus, the holiday season is a marketing and advertising nirvana with ripe opportunities and rewards for those who can standout. As the Web continues to expand, we are seeing companies push their traditional offline marketing strategies online and generate viral marketing campaigns that reach millions. A good viral marketing campaign must encompass the following to be truly successful:

1. The user’s reality. The user must be able to relate to the marketing content. Viral marketing comes alive during the holiday season because everyone experiences the holidays together and it hits close to home. Current events are another example of a way to cover this aspect of a strong viral marketing campaign (It would be great to see an online game focused on throwing shoes at President Bush).

2. Creative content: A viral marketing campaign must be creative and well thought out. If you do not have a different spin on the subject, then your campaign will never gain the traction it needs to build the brand.

3. Viral ability: Perhaps the hardest to employ successfully, a good viral marketing campaign must encourage the user to spread the word. This is often accomplished through personalization techniques, such as allowing the user to incorporate their pictures or content into the campaign and to share it with their friends. A site website or online tool that does not have viral ability can still become viral if it has great creative content.

We’ve identified five excellent holiday viral marketing campaigns that we would like to spotlight:

5. The Buddy Group’s Naughty Mrs. Claus

The Buddy Group has taken a new approach to holiday fun by providing a naughty Mrs. Claus site at http://spankmrsclaus.com/ . Users can choose either a “naughty” or “nice” path which leads them to a similar scenario: Mrs. Claus stole some of Mr. Claus’ presents, and it is the user’s duty to spank them out of her. Although not a traditional holiday game for the family, it certainly contains creative content and incorporates reality by use of the holiday season. This page has gained a few links, but lacks viral ability. It does not encourage the user to share the page with anyone else in the same way other successful viral campaigns do.

4. X-Box’s Holiday Gift Influencer

The Holiday Gift Influencer by X-Box helps kids to write letters to convince their parents to buy them an X-Box. The tool generates a customized letter which kids can print or email to the potential gift giver. This tool does a great job at generating creative content and touching reality with the holiday season, but it lacks viral ability. The tool would have been much more successful if rather than downloading the pdf, it sent the actual letter via email with the pdf attached or as an image embedded in the email.

3. Simon Sez Santa 2.0

Created by Signature Advertising and Marketing Solutions, SimonSezSanta provides a “Simon Sez” box which permits the visitor to type any action verb. A real life Santa then acts out this action to the best of his ability. Although not every verb is recognized—and is responded to very wittingly—it is pretty remarkable how many feats are identified. Even words like fly, frolic, and electric slide are correctly executed. The viral ability is somewhat limited with a “Tell a Friend" email link, but it’s there.

2. Office Max’s ElfYourself

A big hit last year, elfyourself.com has returned once again for the holiday season and has earned 32,804 links since its launch. The OfficeMax produced site allows the user to upload up to five different images of friends’—or foes’—heads to be placed on a boy band of dancing elves’ bodies. A choice of disco, country, or other dance styles makes this application even more exciting. The user can choose to spread the laughter by emailing his or her masterpiece to friends and family. Again, we see a mixture of creative content, viral, and the elf aspect hitting reality by incorporating the holiday season.

1. Disney’s Personalized Video Message From Santa

Disney’s Family.com has taken advantage of the holidays by creating an interactive Christmas themed web page. It allows parents of hopeful kids to send personalized messages from the big man, Santa himself. The parent can upload an image of the child and the application will incorporate it into the message. Santa, while in the midst of a hot chocolate-induced computer crash, reminds the youngster that he or she needs to be good to make the cut for the “nice” list. The page definitely has creative content and includes viral ability by giving the user a link to send to friends and family to view the message. A strong viral marketing campaign indeed, it has attracted 296 valuable links in a relatively short period of time.

In conclusion, a strong viral marketing campaign hits home with the user, contains creative content, and encourages the user to share the marketing piece with friends and family. Furthermore, websites that incorporate personalization into their campaign seem to do the best job of becoming truly viral. The pervasiveness of the holiday season makes it a great time to build the foundation of a strong viral marketing campaign; however, organizations should be taking advantage of this interactive technology year-round. I would also be remiss to not include our own holiday greeting– please watch and enjoy! Happy Holidays!