Lonelygirl15

Lonelygirl15 was an ingenius bit of marketing that ran for 2 years on Youtube from June 2006 to August 2008. It was essentially an online show, however, it came across as a simple series of videos posted by a cute teenage girl sharing her daily trials and tribulations.

The show eventually turned out to be a scripted fictional videoblog which had been carefully crafted by a few individuals. It has since spawned at least one offshoot and was talked about in the likes of Business Week and other publications.

The success of the show illustrated just how powerful online videos can be. Ultimately successful viral videos can be monetized and used to channel traffic to sites and products in a highly effective manner.