Elastic Path to launch video parodying online shopping

BOSTON - You can bet there are a lot of marketers out there trying to replicate the success Dove had last year with its viral video Evolution. However, the use of viral video has pretty much been the domain of consumer marketers, with business-to-business marketers sticking to more staid marketing tactics such as trade shows and webinars.

E-commerce services provider Elastic Path Software hopes it can shake up BTB marketing a little when it launches a viral video on YouTube about what would happen if real-world shoppers were treated the same as online shoppers.

"Other companies are boring - these conferences are boring," said Jason Billingsley, vice president of marketing at Elastic Path, about why the company decided to create a viral video.

He was showing some of the initial takes from the video here at the Annual Conference for Catalog and Multichannel Merchants.

Some of the scenarios in the video included a consumer who asks Google for an orange and ends up in a store where everything is the color orange, and another who asks for a turnip and the clerk keeps to trying to cross-sell her by asking if she wants a t-shirt with her turnip or a warranty or a peeler.

Elastic Path plans to launch the video right before the start of the Internet Retailer Conference in San Jose, CA, June 4-7.