Squeak of the Week

I came across a company online that guaranteed they could fashion communications that would go viral successfully. Neat trick, but how do they do that, exactly?

Viral marketing, by its widely accepted definition, is a strategy that encourages people to view and pass on a message to others, creating, ideally, exponential growth in the exposure of that message.

From what I can tell, the method used by this “we guarantee it” company is to seed their viral hopeful in channels with built-in communities, say YouTube.com, Facebook, blog sites or online forums. Okay, that seems like solid media planning. With “x” dollars anyone can guarantee “x” number of exposures. But how does one guarantee the viral aspect: that people will like it enough to send it along?

With enough dollars, enough creative talent and enough chutzpah, you can stack the odds in your favor. Nike, Carlton Draft, Dove and others have done that and succeeded. Others, such as BMW, spent big, big dollars, hired hot, hot talent and ended with so-so results. If you’re lucky, as Diet Coke and Mentos were, you’ll be delivered a viral success on a silver platter. Or, if you’re someone like Trojan Condoms, you have such a ready-made OMG! factor, a viral success is yours to lose.

But what about down in the trenches of marketing reality where the vast majority of American communications are created, where budgets are modest and aspirations are timid, say in places such as Cincinnati? Should we be discussing viral marketing? If you’re an advertiser or an agency, it’s a scary proposition.

The list of epic fails is, itself, epic. Harken back to Aqua Teen Hunger Force and the Boston bomb scare it incited, or to the singer Ashanti’s viral “death threat” campaign, Chevy Tahoe or Virgin’s B3ta competition.

At the Creative Department, we’ve always been big champions of non-traditional marketing. If you’ve worked with us, you know that. (If you haven’t, then why haven’t you?) But when the “V” word pops up, we take pause. With a client who empowers us to go for the Big Idea, we will find it and execute it. We will place it in channels we agree are most conducive to engaging the desired audience. And we’ll make it so people will like it.

The risk with viral is trying to second guess what odd twist, stupid human trick or irreverent content will hook into the zeitgeist of the moment and fill email inboxes around the world.

Absolutely talk about it with your agency or your client, but it’s probably best to do so with great care, the way you’d talk with someone about whether or not to release nerve gas. The risks are big. The payoff can be big. But the client-agency relationship has to be right. We would want it to be one of supreme trust with minutely managed expectations for the project and more positive vibes than Pollyanna on nitrous oxide.

To viral or not to viral, that is still the question. And will be. We haven’t satisfactorily answered it for ourselves, but we have come to identify certain realities. The client has to be ambitious. The agency has to be deeply resourceful. And both must be realistic and share a huge amount of trust to even broach the discussion.

Even with those ideal conditions, our suggestion is to be smart, not risky. As avenues in social media open and new technologies in traditional media augment the advertiser’s toolbox, the ability to stop talking at the audience and start talking with them opens exciting opportunities.

Make communications that engage the audience and serve your strategy, and happiness will be yours, Grasshopper.

So, viral schmiral. To paraphrase one insightful Web denizen, agencies and clients cannot presume to determine what is viral content. Only the people can do that.