Viral marketing is sick, and not in the awesome sort of way, but rather the has-a-runny-nose-and-coughs-on-the-subway sort of way.
There are a few metrics that can be used to judge when a business concept has nearly peaked in trendiness and as a result lost all its meaning. Perhaps the most useful of these metrics is an abundant use of the tag words by MBA students. Viral marketing is pitched as a viable strategy in nearly every marketing and strategy class I attend. When asked for specifics on the strategies used to create said viral marketing, the suggestions are much fewer in number. Many seem to feel completely justified in saying that all you have to do is get your product in front of the right network, or the right individual and voila! Instant virality. This is crazy. This is like the marketing of the 1940’s or what I like to call SALES. It is backwards and does not work
A better idea would be to focus on building a product that people want to talk about. Rapid growth of an idea or product happens because the product is something that people want to talk and hear about, and consequently there is a nonmonetary value associated with sharing.
People like to be the one to tell someone about the great new restaurant, the hip new iPhone ap, or the hilarious YouTube video. Not only that, but they like to be the FIRST. On the flip side, people like to hear about these things. The result: an information arms race.
Let’s make this clear: people don’t like to tell people about the crapy stuff, thus, no arms race. Do you think people were clamoring to tell each other about Coke Zero? It’s a new Coke, it has zero calories, end of discussion. But do you think that viral marketing was discussed in the Coke strategy meetings? I guarantee it was. Do you think Christian Lander thought about how he could create a viral marketing campaign around his book, Stuff White People Like? No, he started a website because he is creative and funny. The website was creative and funny and people wanted more, he wrote a book and people paid for it, lots of people.
The more effective use of resources (your time, your money, other people’s time, other people’s money, natural resources, shelf space, bandwidth) is to design a product that people WANT to talk about.
It’s about making things that excite people, not exciting people about things.
