The Viral Marketing Myth

There are many definitions of viral marketing circulating the web. The wikipedia definition is pretty rubbish, if there is one at all. The one mentioned in marketingterms.com has a better grasp but explains it clearly when it says “Viral marketing depends on a high pass-along rate from person to person. If a large percentage of recipients forward something to a large number of friends, the overall growth snowballs very quickly. If the pass-along numbers get too low, the overall growth quickly fizzles.” Explaining the process of how something becomes viral makes the concept much easier to grasp than a simple definition.

What the above information tells us about viral marketing is that it’s completely up to the consumer, the user, the audience, to turn a campaign into a viral one. When you see agencies claiming that they create viral campaigns ask yourself how can they? They can’t guarantee it. The main aspect of a viral campaign that every marketer needs to remember: You can’t determine what goes viral, the audience does.  Ways a marketer currently attempt to do this is usually through social networking sites (Facebook, Youtube, Twitter etc), send-to-friend functions, catchy phrases, songs and addictive games among others.

A marketer needs to realise than going viral cannot be implemented like you would a TV ad. In fact the best and most rapid viral campaigns are usually done by accident. It is also usually done by beginning outside of mainstream media with messages being spread by the early adopters and innovators. Here are a couple examples:

Vote for Pedro – From the movie Napoleon Dynamite. Napoleon Dynamite was the first full length film created by directors Jared Hess and Jerusha Hess and it debuted at the 2004 Sundance film festival. The film had a relatively tiny budget of $400,000 yet raked in almost $45US million! What we have here is a movie that was not designed the appeal to the masses. It got the movie buffs in a frenzy, some loved it and some hated it and that’s the first step to getting something to go viral. The lovers of it will talk and so will the haters and the word will spread. Not known to the producers was the snowballing effect that would be created by the movie especially one small element, the “Vote for Pedro” slogan. Do a Google search for “Vote for Pedro” and have a look what comes up.  Did the movie directors purposely create this frenzy? Not a chance. Think of the last big budget film that appealed to a wide audience and then recall the legacy it left, if you can.

The Macarena – Who can forget this abhorrent combination of shrieks and limbs. Sung, performed rather, by Spanish duo Los Del Rio, this thing took off and at one point was regarded as the #1 one hit wonder of all time by VH1. It was catchy (unfortunately) so people caught on and in no time every party was full of people doing this dance. Did the Spanish duo honestly believe that their creation would become a worldwide viral behemoth? Considering their specialty was in Andalusian folk music, I would say no as I doubt global music dominance was really their initial driving force. Again this music wasn’t particularly loved by all yet it appealed to a minority who picked it up and ran with it. It was not successful because there was a plan to go viral, it went viral because the right market took hold of it and spread the word.

Of course there have been occasions where brands and agencies have sought after creating a viral campaign and succeeded however it is more due to their ability to target the right people, at the right time and provide a medium in which the campaign can be easily spread. In essence successful viral marketers understand the best environment that will enable a campaign to hopefully grow viral and flourish however success can never be guaranteed.

How do you go viral then? Develop something extraordinary, yell it at the sound boards, give them a megaphone and hope they will sing your praises. That’s going viral.