This week we want to know all about ... Mayday!'s video

'Groundhog Day' - not the annual festival in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, nor the cult film with Bill Murray - is a music video by a previously obscure Miami hip-hop duo called Mayday! It could also be a blueprint for students of marketing seeking to hit the internet jackpot.

In the early hours of one May morning, the four-minute film was uploaded on to YouTube, the website on which more than 70 million videos are watched every day. By the following day the video by Mayday! had been seen by two million people, making it one of YouTube's all-time greatest hits.

The success was due to viral marketing at its most cunning. The record company behind it, Southbeat, was founded in partnership with executives from, a dating site. From this and other sites, it had access to a database of more than three million people, all of whom were sent emails urging them to watch the video.

Then there was internet pornography. On several X-rated websites, a message was posted encouraging users towatch 'Groundhog Day'. One said: 'Our friends from Mayday have a sick video. I need you to watch it, rate it, comment on it.'

As the New York Times observed: 'This marketing tactic reverses a familiar internet ruse: a surfer innocently looking for pornography might find himself staring at a non-pornographic music video rather than vice versa.' Touché.

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