Even if you don’t listen to mainstream radio or watch MTV, at some point over the last year you were in no doubt subjected to The Black Eyed Peas song ‘My Humps’. To me the song was amazingly bad but as its popularity proved, obviously to many it was amazingly good.

The main page on YouTube for the video has over 650,000 views so far and had mainly favorable ratings. Such as:

This video is off the chain!

i luv this song soooooooooo much it makes me wanna dance lol

Then something happened. Yesterday someone uploaded Alanis Morrisette’s brand new cover version of the song to YouTube. Many of you might remember Alanis – her first album Jagged Little Pill (released in 1995) is the best-selling debut album of all time by a female artist, with over fourteen million copies sold in the U.S. alone. But since that time, her sales and popularity have faded considerably. So what do you do if you are a Alanis? You don’t go on a huge media blitz where your record company tries to convince people you are still cool and hip. You release a brilliant, deadpan cover of a silly, popular song. From her already updated Wikipedia page:

On April 2, 2007, Morissette released a cover of The Black Eyed Peas’ “My Humps”. It is a spoof of the song with Alanis singing in a slow, almost sorrowful voice. The clip has become an internet sensation, getting over 200,000 hits on its first day. It is currently the #1 Most Viewed Video on YouTube.

Within barely 24 hours Alanis’ version has almost doubled the views of the Black Eyed Peas version with close to 1 Million views on YouTube at the time of writing (it is also made the Digg music video homepage yesterday). The comments have also been overwhelmingly positive:

This is the most brilliant thing in the history of man.

alanis rocks!!

Wow almost a million views just in a day

Now let’s go back over and look at an interesting turn on the Black Eyed Peas page. Comments have changed to be mainly negative now:

this song is stupid man!!

Hahah. TERRIBLE. Alanis did so much better.

Why? YouTube user CarmaCowboy sums it up nicely:

lol i love the fact that the comments on the video greatly changes from ” Weeeee i love this Vid!” to: wow wtf wy am i watchin’ this?” from basicaly the same mom’ alanis’ video appeared…. new clientele or no… whos the wannabe’s? ^^

The smartest thing for The Black Eyed Peas to know do is to come out and say how much they enjoyed Alanis’s take on their song. On top of that, take one of her big hit songs (‘You Outta Know’ was her first and probably biggest) and redo that in their own style then release it on YouTube. The worst thing they can do? Denounce it or do nothing.

So what can we take away from this for businesses?

* Effectively leveraging social networks can be an extremely inexpensive and effective way of reaching out to your audience.

* It is possible to reposition your brand and reach out to a new demographic in a new way.

* Talk to your audience the way they want to hear from you. If your customers are searching for information in forums – be there to reach them. If they want music videos on YouTube – give them music videos on YouTube.

* When navigating the waters of social networks, its important to have a thick skin and a good sense of humor.

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