“It’s not only chickens and fizzing soda bottles that get the buzz.”

So says Gary Spangler, E-Business Leader, DuPont Electronic & Communication Technologies.

In the MarketingSherpa e-newsletter that landed on me today, I read about Mr. Spangler and his successful use of the blogosphere to promote marketing videos about the advantages of DuPont science called—big stretch—DuPont Science Stories.

Riveting, eh? Well, maybe not to me, but it must have been to the more than fifty thousand viewers who watched them. That number may not rival the biggest viral videos out there, but still, that’s great traffic, and proof that there’s an audience for everything. With smart online promotion you can find them for a heck of a lot less than blasting messages through broadcast media.

To build awareness for their Science Stories, the folks at Dupont took a few very effective (and comparatively inexpensive) steps:

1. Paid promotion on eight blogs, some specifically targeting the science community
2. Posting videos to YouTube, Google Video, and Blip.tv—all free sites
3. Creating their own microsite to also house the videos
4. Showing the videos in a player that let viewers email the link, connect to the player, or paste the video player directly into another blog or website

There are no monetary figures in the articles, but I can imagine those four strategies all run less than just a couple broadcast spots, not to mention the fact that the blog-based campaign was precisely focused on a relevant audience.

Kudos to Mr. Spangler for leveraging the ever-expanding blogosphere’s ability to reach niche audiences. The one question I’d offer is: could it have been done with zero paid advertising?

A few weeks ago I took a jab at Google for diluting their brand. In that post I alluded to Yahoo!’s similar moves that came years before Google’s. In this month’s Fast Company, Robert Scoble starts off recalling how Yahoo!’s VP of communications admitted, about a year ago, that the company had a “thin layer of investment spread across everything we do, and thus we focus on nothing in particular.”

Scoble continues by describing how Yahoo! is trying to right the ship. Jeff Yang is back as CEO and focusing on, as Scoble writes it, filling the “cool stuff supplier” role he once did. That new focus is good. Sure, they once concentrated on searching, but now they seem high on Web applications. Give search to Google and rebuild around Web apps if that’s what’s cool today.

Scoble mentions three Yahoo! applications specifically, all centered on community building and content sharing. What I like about the applications he describes is that they are not locked to a particular site.

All three—Flickr (photo sharing), del.icio.us (Web bookmark storage and organization), and Upcoming.org (a calendar of events tool)—offer a way to syndicate content to other locations, like to your blog or organization’s website.

Die, static website, die!

Big-budget organizations may certainly buy applications like those for the sake of customization, privacy, and accountability, as part of a larger content management system install or whatever.

But what gets me excited is how these free applications can help the small-budget folks. Imagine you’re leading a little nonprofit running long on cause but short on funds. With these three applications as part of your site, you can very easily keep your calendar of events up to date, promote other sites/pages, and publish photos—AND you can make all of that content available to others via syndication.

And you can get free help. With the Flickr app, your supporters can populate your Flickr application by tagging their pix with a tag you specify. Del.icio.us and Upcoming let you create networks that promote and syndicate content from your supporters. Let the people talk for you!

Yahoo! fearlessly continues to revise its brand, which can help you build yours.

Check out Swamble for a fun and innovative social network (sign up for the “private beta”).

Swamble makes it easy to bet on anything: without cash. Online betting is currently illegal in the United States, but as TechCrunch notes in its Swamble review, that could change soon. On the other hand, non-cash betting can force you to get pretty creative—as in one user promising to shave his head if Notre Dame wins seven games this year. Miller beer and “bragging rights” are also very popular.

See also the Swamble’s recently added pro football facebook app.

A blog post from makeuseof.com ran up digg yesterday and got me wondering about all the lists we create. You see them posted all the time: ”My list of favorite X.” This one is pretty typical: 40 Unusual Websites You Should Bookmark.

What compels someone to construct a list like that? Considering the many companies and services mentioned, I’m hopeful makeuseof.com has not become a PR shill. So why? And why would those 40 make this list? Call it coincidence, but Seth Godin wrote a short post yesterday that hits on the topic. Is makeuseof.com an Official Influencer? Were they targeted by marketers? Likely not. With the barrage of Web applications that seem to pour onto the Internet every day, one magical thing still makes them boom or not…and it’s called “do I give a crap about what it does?” As Seth wrote:

…the most effective technique [for viral campaigns] is making stuff worth talking about in the first place. True viral marketing happens not when the marketer plans for it or targets bloggers or skateboarders or pirates with goatees, but when the item/service/event is worth talking about.

Customers, users, visitors, chumps. Call us what you will, but it’s we humans that matter, not what the application does. Make a product worth using, worth talking about, and you just may be on to something. You can try all day to make it viral, to be on as many lists as you can worm your way onto, but if Your Thing does nothing I need, ciao, baby.