_The Likelihood of Going Viral

Viral videos are the dream of every marketer, and those spending time trying to manufacture them often miss the mark. Most viral efforts will fall flat, and I imagine there is a strong negative correlation between the size of the brand and the likelihood of going viral. Why? Try getting the right viral idea through branding, legal, regulatory, privacy, PR, senior management, etc (exhausted yet)… Even if it’s bang on, I’ll bet 10 to 1 that it will die a death of a thousand edits barely resembling the brilliant campaign presented by a creative and enthusiastic team member several months ago.

Instead, what people should be focusing on are “outbreaks”, which are defined as pockets of infection as opposed to viruses. Do you need tens of millions of people to watch your video, or can you get great results if only 100,000 of the right people watch it?  Traditional media buying has biased us toward huge numbers, but “The Tipping Point” and others have shown us how powerful smaller numbers of influentials can be.  Listen to your target and figure out what truly resonates with your influentials, and infect them.

From a budget standpoint, that suggests that brands should not drop $3 million on a single social media campaign. Instead, think about using that same budget on 30 campaigns that each cost $100,000. You’ve increased your overall likelihood of success by 30x while lowering the ROI bar for each campaign.  Brilliant!