“OMFG&%?!!!! –
IT’S GOING VIRAL!!!”
I’m doing some research on the concept of viral/memetic marketing.
This is where I need your help: What does the word ‘Viral’ mean to you?
Charlie bit my finger.
As the word equates to the ‘spreading’ of essentially ‘a virus’ like a snotty toddler or plague of locusts or even the famous ‘LoveBug’ virus that messed up our clunky computers in the year 2000; one person starts something and boom, the whole world has seen it. I can almost remember hearing the nervous high-pitched screams of the millennial technophobes: ’Don’t open your emails that have ‘I LOVE YOU in the subject line! I know it’s tempting, BUT DON’T!!! IT’S NOT EVEN VALENTINE’S DAY!!! ‘ The LoveBug virus crashed THOUSANDS of computers all over Europe and Asia, by sending a copy of itself to everyone in the user’s Windows Address Book and with the user’s sender address. Bad computer worm. This all happened in one day, causing $5.5 billion in damage, presumably due to the basic fact that people just wanted to feel loved. Aw. Now that’s a clever viral.
What about ‘viral marketing’? What does that mean to you ?
Does it work? Is it really the “PR dream”? How does one PLAN a viral video? Apart from the oh-so-obvious-and-talked-about Old Spice viral videos…Now back to me…what else has been successful to you i.e. made a lasting impression?
I’m planning to write something about Youtube marketing and the reality of whether branded content can really receive 200 million views overnight and why this has become the general expectation. Sure, we have seen examples that brands can do it. But I don’t believe there is any formula – do these snooty articles out there offering a guide book on how apparently ‘Anyone can make a Viral’ really have any depth? After all, even The Muppets did a branded viral ad campaign.
Parodies. Spoofs. Toddler breakdancers. The Lonely Island. Pets. Dancing on Treadmills.
It appears that the rules are: There are no rules. Perhaps content is not king. Perhaps there is no hidden secret. You can’t just make it about cats. Or dogs in hats driving cars. Or laughing babies. Or just put the words ‘Lady’ ‘Gaga’ or ‘Bieber’ in the title. Or can you?
THOUGHTS PLEASE!! I’ll give you a beer.
My two cents:
The fundamental thing to remember about viral marketing that everyone seems to constantly forget is that it doesn’t revolve around brands. It revolves around content. Brands will only be able to benefit from something ‘viral’ if the brand itself takes a back-seat to the actual content. If you exclude adverts (which can go viral, but usually through the primary means of huge above the line spend, which in my opinion, invalidates their claim to being truly viral) 99 out of 100 virals are not about brands, but about cats, or someone wanting people to leave Britney alone, or some awful choreographed dance at a wedding.
The best branded viral marketing has great content directly at its core, and the brand takes a back-seat. Some of the best examples of this include Old Spice, Skittles Touch and Samsung Sheep LED Art, all of which hero the content, whilst the brand exists only on the periphery.
In my experience, things go viral when you least expect them to. I used to mess around with Tumblr a lot a year or so ago, and I made this on a particularly boring evening –
http://tosh.comedycentral.com/blog/files/2011/03/sweet-trade-bro.gif
I didn’t think it was particularly hilarious, but I’ve seen it in loads of different places on the net, including Comedy Central, Reddit and on Imgur (where just one incarnation of it has 300,000 views). I’ve since deleted that Tumblr and it’ll never be credited to me. Sniff sniff.
But yeah, I’ve tried to replicate a viral effect since with varying degrees of success, but nothing close to Sweet Trade Bro. How depressing.
x
Shut up Chris
THANKS guuys!!!!!!!!
Make good shit, don’t be a cuntzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
In all seriousness, there is no formula. There was an interview a couple of years back with someone who’d been behind two 20million+ videos; he freely admitted that he had no idea that they were the ones of the 3000 or so that he’d produced that people would find popular. There’s pretty much fuckall new to say on this, imho – if it’s not funny, or shocking, or creepy, or moderately sexual, or cute, or “have-to-watch-through-my-fingers-oh-god-it’s-so-embarrassing”, or any combination of one or more of the above, it won’t go ‘viral’. If it *is* one or more of the above criteria, then it might. But you don’t know.
http://t.co/NvGYDUs
‘Viral’ is an often misused term, in that something can only be called viral once it has become viral. Which is not to say that things aren’t planned to have a viral effect, but to call them viral prior to their success is a fallacy.
It’s also often thought that viral equals funny, not always the case either. Take Susan Boyle, Danny MacAskill, or, indeed, Michael Jackson dying as examples, not one of them is funny, yet they all became viral successes.
What all of these have in common is human emotion. Emotion is what makes people want to share something. People sharing something is what leads to something becoming viral.
While viral success cannot be guaranteed it is also wrong to say that viral potential cannot be engineered. Some of my clients who create content with viral potential have success rates of >75% – this simply cannot be explained as being a fluke.
There is no hard and fast formula for ‘viral’ success, but there most definitely are strategies with which content with real viral potential can be crafted.
If you need any further comment, or questions, you have my email :)
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