What Makes A Campaign Go Viral?
Thursday, January 15, 2009 at 03:53PM | by Allyson Kapin 
"Viralness" in online campaigning is something everybody wants, yet nobody really knows the secret formula.
In the end, when “viralness” happens -- whether it's a video, a petition or just a text piece that everyone keeps forwarding to friends and families -- we often aren't sure exactly why this particular piece of content went viral.
Planning for something to go viral is therefore about as unreliable a strategy as planning to win the lottery on command. “It's wiser instead to use time-tested, tried and true strategies, such as old fashioned guerilla promotion of your campaigns, or even (gasp) paid promotion -- monitoring your ROI closely of course -- while also doing whatever we can to make sure we are "open" to the possibility of that “viralness,” to strike,” says Clint O’Brien, Vice President of Nonprofit Services at Care2.
Yesterday over on Twitter (@care2frogloop) we asked our followers what was their personal definition of “viral?” Here’s what non-profit influentials like Katrin Verclas of MobileActive and Matt Stempeck of Americans for Campaign Reform had to say in less then 140 characters.
@mstem: Viral is something you want to share with friends even without being told to. MoveOn's video fit that bill. – Matt Stempeck, Americans for Campaign Reform
@annedougherty: Viral=something people pass on of their own accord; it's content+timing+luck; marketing helps but push too hard+thud! – Anne Dougherty, Clean Water Action
@escapetochengdu: Viral = spreads on its own without any help from its creator. – Jessica Kutch, SEIU
@Katrinskaya: Viral content = Stuff that gets forwarded. – Katrin Verclas, MobileActive
Do you have a different definition of “viral?” Post your comments!
Receive monthly updates
Reader Comments (2)
Creating a spectacle can be great for getting short-term buzz, but the lifespan of that viral marketing will be short (even if I'd still consider it viral if it had people talking to each other).
However, I do believe that if you have a useful or innovative product or a cause that a large number of people care about of find interesting, that in itself can create viral marketing.
What products have you talked to your friends about? Was it because they created a fake store front in the middle of nowhere <http://www.brandinfection.com/2005/10/14/branding-as-art-the-fake-prada-store/> or pulled some other crazy online or IRL scheme? Or, was it because you use the product every day, were wowed by their customer service, or otherwise identify it as something other people should know about?
Now, I probably would tell more people about the former for a short period of time, because it's more novel and interesting, but which would I tell another friend about a month later? Probably the latter (it took me 10 min of Googling to figure out which store created the faux storefront).
If you can combine contrived buzz with the organic viral effect that comes from an innovative or useful product / something that people care deeply about, you can go even farther, quicker.
I there are some great parallels between this viral marketing debate and the black hat (pushing the limits to get more attention more quickly) vs. white hat (following the rules and letting search engines and searchers create teh results) SEO debate.
Personally, I take the middle ground in both: First, make sure you have a product or cause you would want to tell people about and that those people would tell other people about. If not, why not? Keep going until you think it's buzz worth (if it's something that can ever be buzz worthy). Then, as you launch it, confident it's what you want to launch, push the envelope a bit (IRL with some PR tactics, or online with some strategic viral initiatives and somewhat dubious SEO tactics).
Once you're getting good search engine results and have more people aware of your product, the product itself should do the rest if it's truly worthy of staying viral.
Just my two cents.
I had a chance to interview Dan Heath, coauthor of the book Made to Stick, and he suggests that to get an idea sticky there is indeed a formula: SUCCESs (Simple, Unexpected, Concrete, Credible, Emotional, and Story).
I'd submit that viral and sticky are pretty similar (though not entirely the same). But when you review those viral megahits, many of the SUCCESs elements are present. To me this reinforces your earlier assertion that we shouldn't plan to go viral, but plan for SUCCESs.
CAVEAT: it is also just as common for the unexpected viral video or campaign to overwhelm the originator's servers or capacity to handle the flood of responses. While you can't plan to GO viral, you certainly can have a backup plan for when it does happen.
-- David Kinard, PCM