Welcome to the definition of viral marketing. Move over, YouTube, because a caveman has brought his own version of online “homespace” (a term a lot of people used back in the 1990s) to a literal head, outdoing all the competition.

What happens when a commercial becomes a social icon? Ask Geico Direct and their marketing team in charge of promoting their online presence. Ask the producers of the new ABC comedy “Cavemen”coming in the Fall lineup. It started as a boom grip upset on the set of a Geico commercial, coining the infamous phrase that started an epidemic: “It’s so easy, a caveman can do it.” Since then, we’ve had spin-off commercials discussing the existence of cavemen still active and thriving in society, and they have been a huge hit on YouTube and other video sharing services.

CavemansCrib.com is a great example of interactive online marketing. It proves that, to ensure brand recognition, sometimes all you need is to join in with a minority group who hates the brand you’re advertising. All over the site’s interactive walkthrough of the sophisticated bachelor pad of a New York caveman are built-in advertisements for Geico: the gecko on the dart board, doodles in a book showing the gecko is evil, commercials playing on the big screen that make the residents angry, phone messages from the marketing department of Geico that ask for the cavemen to call them, text messages on random phones about seeing Geico ads, and even a fake blog (”Musings of a Caveman”) that argues the absurd discrimination of cavemen of all ages by Geico’s marketing team. The brand you love to hate along with the jaded tribe of neanderthals has made themselves a viral campaign that proves to be bigger than the gecko ever was.

The gecko was the beginning of Geico’s tendency towards storyline commercials. It started with a gecko making a press release about getting phone calls from people who couldn’t tell the difference between Geico and gecko. The then-British accent changed to Aussie and the humorous antics of the new spokes-gecko would turn into years worth of advertising. The gecko campaign started getting more attention when the gecko began interviewing and talking about more than just Geico; his personal life and opinions on society were far funnier and more memorable than just getting calls from illiterate boobs. Thus came the new storyline: after the huge reaction from the original caveman commercial, it’s clear Geico is picking up and running with the idea, using it to promote themselves in as many marketing channels as possible.

The interactive site is all Flash-based, showing the power and possibilities of the newer video-integrated versions of Flash. Since Adobe took over Macromedia, it has been nothing but successful to enhance the tools that web developers have eventually considered standard issue. Searching with your mouse, you find areas of the apartment you can move to, things that make the cavemen appear and talk to you, and items that you can interact with to learn more about the cavemen. After I watched camera phone videos, blew up the microwave, caught a caveman in the shower, played ”dress the caveman” to prepare for a party, thumbed through magazines and cook books, almost walked in on a room with the cliche tie on the door, and even watched a fictional commercial DVD for “iheartcavemen.com” (a signpost site, another such domain being the fictional cmoviesonline.com), I couldn’t help being even more curious about the new TV show coming out.

More interesting is the attached marketing that could be included in this virtual space. The band Royksopp (who also did the soundtrack to a commercial) and several other real-life bands were featured, and so was the iPod. This has so much more potential than Geico is utilizing, however. The interactivity is limited to items and areas that give you hints about the lifestyles of the residents. There are so many other opportunities for gags and quirks that could entice longer page view time. Partnered advertising could also lead to better revenue potential from the site. Perhaps this is a good time for someone else to make a similar, independent site that offers product placement to help pay for development…

While you’re at the site, notice some running gags about the attempt of the cavemen to become civilized and the bleed-through of their knuckle-dragging roots: the plethora of food-related features (cook books, articles on food, blog entries about smoked Hungarian paprikash); the semi-trendy polyester clothes; the hair treatments and appointments for veneer procedures; their constant partying; the art show tickets; the random high-tech gadgetry; a joke about cavemen giving us civilization and us using it to create tennis rackets and pimp canes; and the constant stream of girlfriends and one-night flings between the three roommates. It’s like watching a bad, New York version of the people I used to hang out with in my early twenties, only most of these people are older than I am. It’s sad, but it’s entertaining.