A few weeks ago I was in a bar and I saw a commercial come on TV for something called the “Shake Weight.” Until that point I had never seen it before. I remember watching in awe thinking that it must be a parody and that I was missing the joke with the sound off in the bar.

This is the spot that I saw:

Nope, not a spoof it was for real. At first I questioned what self-respecting woman would use such a product with the obvious sexual overtones. Then, yesterday I was in Bed Bath & Beyond and I saw two women using the Shake Weight in the middle of the store for all to see. And yes, if you’re wondering, it looked just as obscene as it does in the commercial. I started to think about how genius this marketing campaign might actually be.

Every company wants their message to go viral and spread organically, but that seldom happens. The dilemma I face every day as a marketer is how I can be true to the brand message of a product, but still make the creative entertaining enough for people to want to actively link to it, Tweet about it, and add it to their Facebook page. Shake Weight, accidentally or not, has a found a way to do that. In fact, two weeks ago the mother of all validation came – SNL parodied it:

Obviously Shake Weight is riding unbelievable buzz from their highly, err, “engaging” TV spots. I’d be really curious to know how all this “excitement” is translating into actual sales. Sometimes something can be so entertaining or so funny, that people may doubt it’s actually real. Does this fall into that category? Also, ponder this, how would the buzz change if they tried to market this to men by using men instead of women in their commericals? Chew on that for a bit.

I’d love your feedback in the comments below.