I knew the Arctic Monkeys had gone utterly mainstream the morning I heard a package on their success via online word-of-mouth marketing on Radio 4’s Today programme. That was a few years back, but I got the same feeling recently when Today got a company to make a viral ad about itself, ostensibly to teach listeners what they are and how they operate. If this is a real viral ad, I am an Arctic Monkey’s uncle, I thought.

Today needs an online viral ad like I need a tiara made of cheese, as Emily Bell, head of digital at the Guardian, pointed out on the show – it has around nine million listeners and it only got 50,000 views of its viral ad, even after the show relentlessly plugged the viral ad, which means it's not really a viral ad anyway. Broadcast power still vastly outweighs online power.

I doubt any law firm in the UK has made a viral marketing video and put it on YouTube, but I’d be delighted to hear otherwise. What’s interesting to me is that law firms already ‘do’ viral – recommendation is, according to various surveys I’ve seen recently, still the primary method of law firms getting new clients. It doesn’t matter if that recommendation is via email or down the pub – that’s viral marketing.

The problem, I think, is that law firms still don’t think like other kinds of business (that’s a good thing, sometimes) about things like viral marketing. If they did, they’d see that their business model is enormously dependent on it already, so thinking about doing it on the web should be a no-brainer.

That doesn’t mean your law firm should do one – after all, do you think you could be as funny about your firm?

But I’m sure that some claims firm out there will do one, if it hasn’t already…