Have you seen it? The video everyone keeps sharing excessively on Facebook and Twitter? The video that racked up nearly 30 million views within 36 hours? The video you really need to watch right now if you haven’t already?

(If you’ve watched it already go ahead and watch it again, you know you want to)

‘First Kiss’ collects 20 attractive and well-dressed strangers and shoots them kissing each other for the first time. There’s a build up where you see them all meet each other, look at each other with indecisiveness and dough eyes, mentally prepare themselves for a loving lip-lock, and then go in for the kill. At the end of the video the couples are laughing and smiling, and you see a slight connection between them there.

That connection is beautiful, isn’t it? You then notice there is no advertising of any kind at the end of the video. Even the person who directed it, Tatia Pilieva, has had no real stamp on the Internet yet.

So now you’re thinking, “aww, what a cute little indie experiment.” Haha! Not so fast. As Jezebel revealed yesterday, ‘First Kiss’ is an ad for a clothing company based in New York called Wren Studio. Their cutesy hipster ways held your soft, plush heart and stabbed it with the reality of a sneaky sell. Well, I’m not so bothered by this because I work in marketing, but if you wanna know why this was so successful, read up (son)!

Here are five reasons why ‘First Kiss’ works as an incredible viral hack:

1). You thought it wasn’t an advertisement, so you shared it. They had the amateur “oh, we’re just experimenting! Isn’t it sweet?” kind of feel to the video. Marketers are catching up with you guys. They know that you don’t like to share obvious advertisements so much. So they opted on simple studio lighting, attractive people, and great actors (so convincing). You got the green light and shared it with all your friends because you thought you weren’t supporting some sort of ad.

2). They announced their true incentive after a full day. These sneaky mofos knew what they were doing all along. They finally announced that they were an ad on Twitter through Tatia’s tweet. Then Jezebel picked it up. Although, I have a feeling that they might have had an initial agreement to announce through Jezebel exactly 24 hours after (which they pretty much did). Who really knows? Who cares at this point? They’re smart. This is basically FREE marketing folks.

3). They got a few small stars in there. I personally noticed French singer & songwriter SoKo (who is also the singer in the video), but there’s also Damian Kulash of OK Go, and a few models and actors (list goes on, everybody is a somebody in the video. They were all carefully orchestrated).

4). They had attractive people kissing. Let’s be real, do you really think this marketing campaign would have gone viral if it were unattractive people kissing? Like imagine two morbidly obese people kissing. No, no one wants to connect with your gross kisses. I know, I’m brutal. Sorry not sorry.

5). They tapped into your emotional side. It is known by many marketers that content which evokes positive emotions goes most viral. They took you down memory lane and brought you back to your palpitating heart, your sweaty palms, your nostalgic, dreamy, lovey dovey self and left you there. Then, they tried to sell you clothes. The nerve of the bastards.

But damn them for their ingenuity. Damn them! *shakes fist in air*

So! If you’re just a viewer with no intentions of selling anything to anyone, you should open up your eyes and be aware of something that has high production value and goes viral. There’s usually a sneaky sell behind it.

As for you marketers out there, bookmark the shit out of this one. Take a few pointers from this ingenious ad for your next viral marketing campaign.

*Edit* just found out that the video increased sales by 14,000% for Wren Studio. If this doesn’t say something, I don’t know what does! Here’s the article on Business Insider.