Spreading Against Your Will

Some thoughts on viral ideas that spread without the consent of their hosts.

The "viral is a dumb name for media that spreads" is hardly a new conversation, but Faris summed it up quite nicely the other day, explaining that viruses spread without the consent of the host. Viral marketing, on the other hand, is different. "LOTS OF PEOPLE CHOOSE TO PROPAGATE IT. It requires people to do something. Voluntarily. For their own reasons. It is not simply a new way to broadcast our messages through populations. It suggests we push, when in fact they pull."

But then I read something about the Sarah Palin turkey murder interview and got to thinking. New York Magazine's Daily Intel blog wrote that the cameraman told Palin and her aides of what was going on in the background and they said, "no worries." As the Daily Intel wrote, "It’s been speculated that Palin would have trouble staying in the national spotlight until 2012 while holed away up in Alaska, where news travels by sled dog and darkness shrouds the land for months at a time. But this video proves that Palin knows exactly how to continue to attract attention: Take a normally mundane gubernatorial event like a turkey pardon, Palin it up with something irresistible to the elite east-coast liberal media, and watch the coverage follow."

This, I'd argue, is actually closer to the way viruses spread. People and media are sharing this video not because they like the message, but because they're so amazed by what's going on. It's almost like they're doing it against their will. (As my sister put it, it's kind of like watching a car crash.) Think of political combat generally and this is how things work. When the republicans started the Bill Ayers thing, for instance, the hope was that they'd get everyone talking about it. Even the people who were saying how terrible it was to try and connect Obama and Ayers were actually pushing forward the republican cause, further cementing a connection between terrorism and Obama.

I recently watched Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story and this is precisely the kind of politics he created. One of the more famous moves was in making Willie Horton a household name (here's a clip from Boogie Man about it). While the world argued about the ad, the final outcome was that, as Atwater had apparently predicted, the country knew Horton's name (and presumably connected it with Dukakis) by the end of the campaign. The Obama/Muslim connection was similar in that even when people on the left argued how ridiculous it was they were still spreading the idea.

Basically the best way to fight this kind of behavior is to not talk about it. But most people can't help themselves. To give one more political example, remember September when everybody could talk about nothing but Sarah Palin? While democrats were panning her as an inexperienced choice they were still pushing her further into the collective consciousness (and I would guess making her seem more experienced: After all, how could you be famous and inexperienced?)

In a non-political sphere, think about Wired's blogging is dead article and the firestorm it created. Most of what I read was disagreeing with the idea, but in the process they were also strengthening the meme (both from a pagerank and collective consciousness perspective). While lots of people opened their posts with something to the effect of "I don't even want to respond to this," they followed it with a response, thus justifying it as a worthwhile bit of thinking (inasmuch as it made them feel compelled to write a retort).

Anyway, all of this is to make the point that while I do think viral is overused in marketing terms, I also think there are viral ideas that spread despite their hosts best effort not to push forward the idea.

Oh, and happy thanksgiving.

Update (11/29/08): My buddy Eric wrote a very interesting response to this post over at his blog. It's specifically about how even if you disagree with something you may be accepting the framing of the issue and thus pushing forward the idea. Well worth a read.

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Widgets are the New Black

Now that everyone has their own webpage they want to decorate them with your content.

Everything's shrinking on the internet. I'm not talking about file size or site depth, mind you, but rather the essence of what makes up the web. While we once discussed websites, we now discuss entries or even links. We're finally beginning to accept that the web is a network made up of individual nodes of information. While there are clusters, they are really secondary to those singular elements.

What happened to precipitate this change? Put shortly: Google. Like most revolutions online in the last few years, the search engine that could played a huge part in the restructuring of how we understand the internet. When you search for a term you don't often arrive at a home page, but rather somewhere deeper in the site's structure with the exact information you're looking for. Once blogs rose to prominence, with their entries and permalinks (individual URLs for every entry), the shift was on in full force. Part of the reason blogs have grown so quickly is because of the juice they get from Google. When you write about lots of different things and have individual pages for it all, people are bound to run across it.

Now people are beginning to think of individual pages as fragmented entities thanks to Myspace and the gang. Widgets are the new thing: A little bit of code that someone can add to their site. It could describe their personality via Blogthings, display their photos via Flickr or show the latest video of someone lighting a fart on fire via YouTube. The point is that a user can take it and put it anywhere they want. It's theirs to play with, though it often holds your logo.

Widgets are the new email-to-a-friend. It's no longer good enough to just give people an option to share something with a few. Now that they have their own pages they want to share it with the masses. So ask yourself, how are you helping them?

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Contagious Creations

Everyone calls it viral marketing, but if it doesn’t spread your idea is dead.

[Editor's Note: This is a DRAFT of an article that is published in the October issue of Admap Magazine. Apparently I'm allowed to post a draft as long as I make it clear that it's just that. Some of you may remember a shorter version of this article I linked to about a month ago. This is a far more complete version. Hope you enjoy.]

The advertising industry has caught an infectious bug. It’s considered highly contagious and shouldn’t be ignored. They’re calling it viral marketing and ever since Crispin Porter + Bogusky created the now-famous Subservient Chicken, every marketer worth their salt has promised to include a viral component as part of a client’s next campaign. The thing is, while the dream of viral marketing is a nice one, the reality of producing a viral element, one that effectively spreads through one-to-one exchanges, is often an unpleasant one.

That's not to say viral is dead, quite the contrary. Still, as with any element of a campaign, viral must be understood for what it is: a gamble. True, most often it's a cheap bet. But it's a bet nonetheless, and as any good gambler knows, the odds favor the house. A successful viral piece depends on a nearly infinite number of variables, the most important of which is distribution. When a marketer creates a print-ad or online banner, the means of distribution have been decided; well-received or not, there is little question that the advertisement will reach the target defined by the outlet. Viral is another story altogether.

In fact, just calling it viral is problematic. After all, isn’t the goal of all marketing to be viral? When creating an advertisement, the hope is that the message will infect the consumer and replicate itself inside them, thereby connecting the brand and the individual. The only online elements considered viral are those that find success. That’s because, as every good virus knows, it’s either spread or be dead.

By concentrating on the long-term goal of virality, marketers often lose sight of the narrower objectives and strategies specifically attached to online viral advertising. The strategy of a successful online viral marketing element concentrates not on incubating a message, but rather on spreading it. In other words, the viral message has to be contagious. In fact, contagious marketing is probably a much more appropriate term. Every time one of these elements is created, the hope is that one person will feel compelled to pass it to another, or better yet, many others.

It doesn’t matter how original, revolutionary or amusing your message is if no one sees it. And with ‘viral’ marketing, there’s no guarantee anyone will. After all, there’s no formal distribution channel, just those people you hope will email, water cooler, instant message and blog your idea. Seldom asked, however, is just who those people are. Really knowing your audience is an important part of any campaign, but it's even more integral for ‘viral.’ Keep in mind, you're not just trying to talk to these people; you're trying to convince them to be a proactive co-marketer. If you don’t have keen insight into what gets your target consumer excited, then there’s no way you’re going to be able to craft a contagious idea that they will find worthy of passing along.

There are lots of things to think about when it comes to a ‘viral’ target, but few are more important than what they’re doing when you expect them to help you spread your seed. Are you targeting college-educated 24 to 35-year-old males who make $100,000 plus? Well then, you better know that the majority of these people will be at work when they read/see/hear your message. They're doing things like working on spreadsheets and chatting with buddies. They're not interested in sound (because the guy in the cubicle next to them would probably not appreciate it) and they need something with a punchline that will pay off almost immediately. The most important thing to remember, though, is that at some point they'll be bored. They'll save that spreadsheet, polish off that PowerPoint and be left to their own devices, if only for a moment or two. Here’s your opening, this is prime time for contagious marketing: the time of the day we all face at some point, when we click aimlessly, hoping to find something to amuse ourselves that can quickly be closed should the boss come around.

Appropriately enough, Jonah Paretti, director of R&D at Eyebeam, calls people engaging in these non-work activities the ‘bored-at-work network’ (BWN for short). Its members have the power of millions and can spread links faster than any television network ever could. They range in age, income, gender and race, but they all have one thing in common: They’re looking to be engaged. Of course, that’s easier said than done. Often, the most unexpected things are the ones that end up picking up steam and taking on a life of their own. But that’s the real beauty of it, right? It could be anything; a video of a middle school kid pretending to wield a light saber or a commercial where Honda parts are used to make a Rube Goldberg-esque sequence. It’s almost impossible to gauge how contagious something will be until you put it out there. But when you get it right, it can spread faster than a middle school rumor.

Still, there are ways to increase the odds for this kind of contagious marketing, however. Just as a card counter uses what she knows to gain a small advantage against the house, marketers can utilize the lessons of others’ past successes and failures to help them beat the odds. Of course, the strategies behind these questions aren’t written in stone, nor should they be, but taking them into consideration as a means of evaluating your contagious element can’t hurt.

• Did you heed the connectors? There are millions of them out there writing blogs, telling marketers exactly what they like and don’t like. People listen to them and they love to be at the forefront. Find them (Technorati.com is a good place to look), listen to them, engage them and let them help you.
• Did you ask people you know? Most likely lots of people you know are part of the BWN. Ask them what they think. See if they’d pass the link around. The more of a connector they are, the more valuable their opinion. The beauty of contagious marketing is that the potential carriers are not hard to find, they’re all around us.
• Is it honest? If you’re pretending to be something you’re not and you get caught, that negative publicity can be just as contagious as any viral piece, possibly even more so. Think about what you’re risking by presenting yourself dishonestly to the very people you hope to reach and what the ultimate impact of that action may be.
• Did you have fun? It’s pretty simple, if you didn’t have a good time doing it, then it’s probably not going to go viral. Why would someone else enjoy something you didn’t? Yeah, this question probably works for all marketing, but seems even more relevant when you want to go viral.

In the end, though, the most important rule to remember is that there are no rules. That is the beauty of this kind of marketing. It’s attention you’re vying for, and if you create something contagious you’ve done your job, no matter what approach you may have taken. Everyone in the advertising business knows about Subservient Chicken, and just about all of them have tried to model a ‘viral’ element in the image of the feathered one. In doing so, many lose touch with the fact that anything can be ‘viral.’

There’s even a whole other kind of ‘viral marketing’: The kind the consumer spreads unknowingly. In point of fact, the ‘viral’ concept existed before Subservient Chicken, and companies thrived using ‘viral marketing’ tactics that didn’t necessarily involve a bunch of people clicking a “tell a friend� button. Take Hotmail, for example. The free web-based email service built a customer base by including a message at the bottom of every outbound email informing the recipient that the message had been sent from Hotmail.

Although on first glance it may not seem it, Hotmail was using ‘viral’ advertising. While we tend to believe that ‘viral’ needs to meet certain criteria, really, it can be anything that uses ordinary people’s online connections as its platform. There’s no reason we should limit ‘viral’ to videos or interactive games. As shown by Hotmail, something can go ‘viral’ by utilizing the medium in new and exciting ways. Of course, most marketers are not in a position to create an application which will insert their message directly into their target network and replicate it without their knowledge. However, it does show that there are other, worthwhile ways to think about contagious marketing.

Sometimes finding those new and exciting approaches, however, means exiting your comfort zone. The old marketing maxim of “staying stupid� seems incredibly appropriate here. By leaving your mind uncluttered by “what works� and “what doesn’t,� it’s easier to find new answers to old questions.

It’s for this reason we need to remember the purpose (contagiousness), the audience (often those people who are bored at work) and the medium (the internet and, increasingly, mobile devices). In reality, it all boils down to one simple rule that can be applied to almost any marketing project: Start with what you know and work your way to a big idea, not vice-versa. Depending on the path you choose, the questions here may be helpful, but there’s no guarantee. With viral, there’s never just one answer. Pass that on.

About the Author:

Noah Brier is a writer at Renegade Marketing Group, the agency responsibly for PeopleAgainstFun.org, the HSBC Bank Cab and other viral successes. For more on Renegade, visit www.renegademarketing.com.

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Contagious Creations

A link to an article on viral marketing I wrote for AdBumb.

Just wanted to point everyone to the piece I wrote on viral marketing for AdBumb titled "Contagious Creations". It's all about how the real goal of so-called viral marketing is to create something that's contagious. An excerpt:

In fact, just calling it viral is problematic. After all, isn’t the goal of all marketing to be viral? When creating an advertisement, the hope is that the message will infect the consumer and replicate itself inside them, thereby connecting the brand and the individual. The only online elements considered viral are those that find success. That’s because, as every good virus knows, it’s either spread or be dead.

Go read the whole article and let me know what you think.

Oh, and please ignore the picture, it somehow got stretched and I look like a doof.

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What is Viral Marketing?

More thinking about the implicit dangers of marketers trying to create "viral" elements.

A while back I mentioned that I was beginning work on an article about viral marketing. Well, as that article moves closer and closer to being finished I find myself faced with the need to add a concluding paragraph. Of course, this is problematic because one of my conclusions is that it is impossible to know if you've created something viral. In fact, much of the article focuses on understanding the real goal of this kind of marketing, which is contagiousness. When you create a "viral" element, the goal is to create something that people will be impelled to pass around.

In response to this Mobile Technology Weblog post about viral marketing, I commented:

I think the issue here may be a semantic one. The more I think about the term "viral" marketing, the more it bothers. After all, a virus is "an infective agent that typically consists of a nucleic acid molecule in a protein coat, is too small to be seen by light microscopy, and is able to multiply only within the living cells of a host." Now, isn't that the ultimate goal of all marketing? Isn't the goal of any advertisement to infect a person and multiply inside them, thus connecting the individual and the brand? It seems to me that contagious marketing is a much better term for what this is. The goal of this kind of marketing is to create something that impels a person to spread it through online channels.

While I understand that when spread, this type of marketing follows a similar path to that of a virus, however, if you haven't made some contagious, it can never hope to "go viral" (if that makes sense).

Anyway, after reading this very interesting 1997 article about how Hotmail used viral tactics to grow it's user base (found via The Mobile Technology Weblog) I thought I might explore some of the ideas out loud here, in hope of getting to a conclusion for myself. What's interesting about Hotmail's growth is that rather than spending money on advertising to add users, they simply added a little message at the bottom of each email that made the recipient realize that the sender was using a new, free web-based email. Hotmail used it's users' email messages as an advertising platform, just as another company might use billboards or television commercials in the non-digital world. While it's certainly a fairly intrusive way to get the word out, it's undeniably contagious because everyone who sends an email has no choice but to extol the value of Hotmail. They have become carriers of Hotmail's message.

What's so interesting about this is that people might not necessarily think of it as "viral," especially people in marketing. I expect that's because we've slowly backed ourselves into a corner of just what a "viral" element is, which is why it seems so important to me to back up and concentrate on the contagiousness of the message. Essentially this kind of marketing looks to use ordinary people's online connections as its advertising platform. Hotmail found a way to tap into that network without the express consent of the users, most advertisers, however, don't have that option.

With that said, though, there's no reason we should limit "viral" to videos or interactive games. As shown by Hotmail, something can go "viral" by utilizing the medium in new and exciting ways. In the case of Hotmail, there is little doubt that the medium is the message, with each email contained a snippet that introduced the reader to this new service that obviously works well enough that their friend has chosen to use it. Marketers need to expand their zone of comfort. Marketers need to forget what they've learned and open their minds to new things. To quote from Weiden + Kennedy's five rules of creativity, "come in ignorant every day. The idea of retaining ignorance is sort of counterintuitive, but it subverts a lot of [problems] that come from absolute mastery. If you think you know the answer better than somebody else does, you become closed to being fresh."

It's for this reason we need to remember the purpose (contagiousness), the audience (most often those people who are bored at work) and the medium (the internet and, increasingly, mobile devices). If marketers insist on trying to create "viral" elements than it's important to remember one simple thing: Start with what you know and work your way to an idea, not vice-versa.

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Thinking About Virality

Jumping off points for some writing about viral marketing.

Looks like I'm going to be writing an article about viral marketing. So, as a way to get thinking about it, and hopefully get you guys to think about it for me a little bit, I'm going to get my thought process started right here.

Here's what they want:

What we're interested in is ways in which marketers can successfully exploit, stimulate and even (a little) manage the generation and progress of referrals (buzz, virals, etc). This means understanding more about how the process actually works (research) and seeing how successful operators have got it to work (case studies). There are a number of classic cases out there - BMW Films springs to mind - but not very many really good ones; and I've seen perhaps one decent research paper trying to analyse the process.

Here are some of my first thoughts/general jumping off points and links:

1. I think a lot of interesting stuff has come out of the Contagious Media Showdown. While it exists in a bit of a different realm because it was a competition, there are definitely some lessons to be learned about how links travel, what people enjoy, who's enjoying it, etc. (Links: Slate article by the person behind Crying While Eating, Interview with Jonah Peretti, a director at Eyebeam, OJR article about the Contagious Media Showdown, David Galbraith looks at Blogebrity)

2. What's the impact of "accidental" virals. These are the ads that companies claim they had no part in, and usually have some bad taste to them. The VW suicide bomber commercial is a good example.

3. Follow these links and find lots of good viral: Fimoculous post on why Rex doesn't entirely hate viral marketing (includes lots of great viral marketing examples and resources), my American Demographics article about word-of-mouth marketing.

4. Scoble had some interesting comments on viral marketing. It's especially interesting to think about how easy it is nowadays to find the connectors online (bloggers). It's easy to find out what they like/don't like and work from there.

5. This Danish paper on viral marketing. Unfortunately, only the executive summary is in English, but it's got some interesting stuff.

Sorry for the lack of focus here, but it's a start. What would you add/suggest I look at?

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More Amusing Links Than I Know What to Do With

I'm not quite sure what to do with all these. So here they are, for your enjoyment (in order of preference):

1. Forget-me-not panties: Sensatech technology keeps track of your girlfriend for you, look better and fit more comfortably than the chastity belts of yesteryear.

2. The Guns N' Roses Self-Similar Midi Synth: What happens when you speed up entire GNR songs to a less than a second than use entire songs to make up another GNR song. Just listen.

3. Ringtone Dancer: This guy really loves to dance to ringtones (and to dress up in absurd outfits).

4. Miss Beazley Bush: Help educate Bush's dog to attack liberals.

5. TheBrainFreeze: Watch people get brainfreeze. Always funny.

That's it. If you're really interested, here's an explanation.

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