10 Steps to Viral Success

Despite my distaste for the V-word, I am resigned to give the people what they want, and humbly submit — in preparation for your coming boardroom brainstorm — these 10 infallable steps to “going viral”:

• Be exceptional
• Be extraordinary
• Be strange
• Be special
• Be unprecedented
• Be inimitable
• Be rare
• Be unparagoned
• Be singular
• Be peerless

Yep - that’s it… 10 randomly chosen synonyms for the word “unique”.  Total bullshit, sure; but I’d argue it’s closer to the truth than the volumes of non-sense that have been granted to the reigning champion of advertising lexicon, AND you’ve just saved hours of reading, conference panels, and distraction.

“Viral” is not a tactic… it is, at most, a symptom of being undeniably remarkable, lucky and smart all at the same time. Considering luck resides in the frugal grasp of serendipity, I suppose this list is unsurprisingly as inconclusive as its peers.

I leave you then, with the time saved above, to be remarkable, smart and focused.

Outbreak: The Birth of YouTube

I always love those scenes in movies where a tertiary government “expert” stands before a Patton-esque backdrop and projects the spread of a catastrophic threat.  Last week, Andrew Chen examined the growth of YouTube vs. Webkinz using state-level search volume from Google Insights… and I was inspired.  Combine the first 6 months of YouTube with, say, Clint Howard (Donald Sutherland passed) and we have our scene: a nationwide outbreak.

Taking a page from Outbreak (1995), you can just imagine the media conglomerates behind closed doors, tracking the spread of a virus they cannot (or do not care to) understand.  Just for fun, let’s cast Viacom’s Sumner Redstone in the role of “Colonel Sam Daniels” (Dustin Hoffman)… and Clint Howard to co-star as his closest legal advisor:

Major Casey Schuler: I hate this bug.
Colonel Sam Daniels: Oh, come on, Casey. You have to admire its simplicity. It’s one billionth our size and it’s beating us.
Major Casey Schuler: So, what do you want to do, take it to dinner?
Colonel Sam Daniels: No.
Major Casey Schuler: What, then?
Colonel Sam Daniels: Kill it. Sue it for one billion dollars!

(While I await my WGA card, please enjoy the trailer for Outbreak… on YouTube)

Update: TechCruch notes that “insights only come out from actually playing with data”, as each query is represented separately (“techcrunch” vs. “techcrunch.com”).

Viral Irony is Spelled MTV

I just love the irony surrounding the “behind the scenes” viral video mockumentary in last week’s MTV Movie Awards, which featured Jack Black, Ben Stiller and Robert Downey Jr. trying to catch lightning in a bottle with a viral video for their upcoming movie (ya know, “because it’s all about the internet now”). It’s a solid bit of comedy, valuable promotion for the movie and in many ways true to life. Okay, there’s the setup… and, “Action!”:

• The video works, and with the initial awareness from the show (not to mention star power) begins to take on new life as, you guessed it, a legitimate viral video (so meta!). People laugh, tell their friends, and pass it along until [cue the music]…

• Viacom steps in and issues takedown notices for all instances of the video on YouTube, their courtroom counterpart (the record of which remains forever in the shallow graves of MIT’s YouTomb)… but the video lives on elsewhere (those sites that don’t claim 50.4% of the online video market).

• Meanwhile, the YouTube account behind the infringing upload is “suspended”.
  Roll the credits!

Now, I’m not undermining Viacom’s right to defend their copyrighted material, and it’s entirely possible that their enforcement team has no choice but to keep racking up the “infringements” in advance of their case against Google; but if we can separate ourselves from the legal and business issues for just a brief moment: isn’t it ironic?

[Note: Please remember that there is a permanent ban against using Alanis Morissette lyrics in the comments!] [via Beyond Madison Avenue]

Lying is Bad, Posing is Criminal

Self-proclaimed “viral marketing agencies” be warned: the days of anonymously trolling blogs, seeding message boards and otherwise posing within the community of social media is coming to an end. That is, at least in the UK, which later this month will enact legislation under the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations aimed at regulating the use of such clandestine, faux word-of-mouse tactics.

Specifically, the following will now constitute a criminal offense:

Seeding positive messages about a brand in a blog without making it clear that the message has been created by, or on behalf of, the brand.

Using “buzz marketing” specialists to communicate with potential consumers in social situations without disclosing that they are acting as brand ambassadors.

Seeding viral ads on the internet in a manner that implies you are a simple member of the public.

Does this sound familiar? While I highly doubt the efficacy of government regulation to cure the problem, it is interesting that such measures have become necessary. According to Nielsen’s Online Global Consumer Survey (April 2007), 78% of internet users viewed word-of-mouth recommendation as the most trustworthy form of “advertising” (61% also cited online opinions, recommendations and reviews: effectively a genre of the former). Backed by the relative anonymity of the internet, it’s little little wonder then that some marketers (and/or their agencies) have overstepped common sense and good practice in their desire to influence the conversation around their brand while deluding themselves into the belief that such tactics can actually achieve real results.

In reality, clandestine and intentionally misleading tactics are not just bad practice… it’s poor and shallow strategy. In the worst of cases — the ones which likely and often motivate such thoughtless emergency intervention — anonymous rebuttals are as futile as spitting on an inferno. And in favorable cases it’s a missed opportunity. I’m not quite sure which is worse.

The rise of YouTube has been a particularly detrimental catalyst due to the site’s ambiguous URLs (which coincidentally was the enabling force behind the passé Rickrolling craze) and tantalizing, but prematurely counted, “views” metric. Armed with these two inherent devices, so-called “viral marketers” can deliver tens/hundreds of thousands of views for their client’s half-baked concepts simply by “pounding the pavement” and increasing the link base across the web.  But there is a vast difference in the resulting growth curve — evidenced by an expanding spiderweb of connections — of truly viral content (the kind that actually merits, and is driven by, the desire to share) versus fooling 100,000 clicks that are effectively dead on arrival. Companies that intentionally mislead to spike the numbers, or hire unscrupulous henchmen to do it on their behalf, do not understand this essential distinction… and YouTube is really just one of many outlets for this behavior, fueled by baseless hopes for instant viral success.

It seems to me that the problem requires marketer education much more than market regulation — the market will eventually root out the bad and ineffective peddlers, assuming marketers care enough to properly screen the standards and practices of their brand ambassadors as they should.  They need to better understand the data and community, define more useful benchmarks for success (in advance) and realize that there is tremendous value in openly listening to, participating in — and in some cases facilitating — the collective conversation.

[via WebInkNow]