And the top Facebook pages are …. #1 Barack Obama (no surprise) …. #2 Coca Cola (of course) …. #3 Nutella (What?). Yeah, that’s right. The Italian hazelnut/chocolate spread.

It’s safe to assume that most of the fans were from Europe but the craziest thing about Nutella‘s high ranking is that they don’t advertise. Well, that’s not true; they spent $300,000 on media last year, which is pretty much equivalent to nothing. Here’s the impressive part: their Facebook page was created by a fan, Nutella has 5 million Google search results, there are 5,000 videos on Youtube featuring Nutella, and there are 17,000 photos featuring Nutella on Flickr.

Despite it’s European base, Nutella has become very popular in the U.S. as well; and the U.S. fans are very loyal. For Americans, it’s probably associated with memories of trips to Europe and then they spread the word about Nutella to their friends and family at home. In some ways, it has become a form of social currency.

It’s interesting to see that a company can have a crazy online presence without even trying. They’re obviously doing something right. So here are 3 easy steps to follow that will create the online buzz we all hope for:

1. Become a European staple so Americans will have no choice but to think you’re cool
2. Gather a cult following effortlessly
3. Be kind of like peanut butter, except use a weirder looking nut and add chocolate

I found this article that put my mind at ease. Don’t lie to yourselves, we’ve all done it. Piracy. A CD here, a movie there. Now you can justify your actions.

It turns out that piracy can be good. And that comes from an Oxford economist, so you know it’s legit. Here is her reasoning: if someone pirates a product that they would not have bought otherwise, it technically doesn’t hurt the company because they wouldn’t have been making money from that person anyway. In fact, it might actually benefit the company.

The pirate is going to talk to others about the product and their experiences with the product. That’s what we like to call . . . FREE BUZZ! Who doesn’t like it when people talk up their product without them paying for it? Nobody.

Piracy is only bad news for companies when the pirates would have bought the product but decided to pirate it, anyway. Those are the jerk pirates. We’re not about that. We are about finding unique ways of building buzz.

It will be interesting to see if anyone is going to be brave enough to promote piracy of their own products. That alone will build buzz.

Who has already tried it out?

Prince released “Planet Earth” in the UK two weeks before the CD’s official release in The Mail on Sunday. There was a lot of criticism from record stores in the UK, which caused Columbia records to refuse distribution in the UK. Despite the record store naysayers, the giveaway was a great idea that created tons of buzz and I’m sure it didn’t hurt his London ticket sales.

On their last album, The Slip, Nine Inch Nails gave away the source files so you could remix the audio. There were also free downloads of the entire CD. If you wanted to buy the CD, there were premium priced modules.

Radiohead had a “name-your-own-price” CD release. The average price that people chose was $8 but you could put in $0 if you wanted (that’s what I did).