It’s now ten years since we started working in Viral Marketing.

We created a couple of Flash games and animations as a hobby, and sent the results of our efforts out to a few of our friends.

It was only intended to be a bit of fun, so we were extremely surprised when we found that the pages were getting thousands of visitors from all over the world.

We approached our boss with the suggestion that he could use this as a way of driving traffic to his clients’ sites, but he wasn’t interested, and told us to get back on with some “proper work”!

With his words still ringing in our ears, we decided to set up our own business.

As it turned out, our company was one of the very first in the world to specialise in Viral Marketing.

Within 12 months we had been commissioned to produce games and animations for the likes of the BBC, Channel Four, Channel Five and Blackthorn Cider.

We were even asked to create an online movie trailer for a large Hollywood film.

Our biggest success came during the 2002 World Cup when one viral animation was viewed by over a million people within 24 hours of being emailed out to about 100 people in our address book.

Over the last decade the world of Viral Marketing has changed beyond all recognition.

The fashion for sending attachments by email has died down as spam filters get ever more fussy.

But there is still no shortage of people wanting to send interesting and amusing web links and applications to their friends.

Social Networking sites such as Facebook, Myspace and Bebo have opened up a whole new market for viral applications, and the iPhone takes this into a mobile dimension.

As an example, our Facebook Penalty Shootout Game reached over 150,000 registered users in a matter of months after launching last year.

So if you’re looking for a company to discuss how your business could benefit from Viral Marketing, get in touch with Underground Creative or visit the new Viral Marketplace at Wooshii.com.

After all, there aren’t many other businesses in the world with a decade’s experience in the industry.