First, some history. All this goes back to a book I read a long time ago,
Virus of the Mind:: The New Science of the Meme. It's part of what my site's about,
Captology and
Memetics.
Brodie's book, in turn, goes back to earlier ones. However, most of the relatively new interest in this came from Virus of the Mind.
And sorry, online or offline they all have decay rates. Using Seth Godin's assertion all humanity was wiped out by the 1918 flu pandemic. Simply put, it's not in the nature of viruses to work that way. And nothing in the base literature for memetics says it does.
If he were right, sale for his book would never peak. And, by about now, given the mathematical basis for his use of the word "compounding" -- about a billion people or more would own Godin's book Purple Cow. And by the end of next year, five hundred million more people would own it.
Because that's the practical implication of
compounding without a decay rate. Viruses spread quickly, peak, and then decline. That's what it is to have a viral growth curve, and if it didn't happen that way it wouldn't be viral. It's a curve, not a straight line ... and it's not all up.
And it seems to be a recurring mental error for people on the internet to take the steep part of the curve and project it indefinitely. When the internet first hit, projections were that three billion people would be on the internet by 2001 or so. That would have to mean everyone who had access to a phone would also have access to the internet.
And, today, compounding without decay would have to mean more people are on the internet than ever lived in the history of humankind. That's mathematics, folks. While the internet may have warped people's ability to do simple math, it's hasn't changed mathematics. Only marketers can add two and two and come up with fifty billion.
The "Not The Same" article has one good point ....
Companies put together a standard advertising or marketing campaign and then call up a viral consultant with the request to "make" the campaign go viral.
Essentially a rehash of an old ClickZ article
What Makes it Viral?.
Memetics For Conversions: The Hula HoopThe History of the Hula Hoop: Sales of
Twenty Million in the first
six months. I
n two years they sold 100 Million Hula Hoops.
And all without the internet.
There is only one meme with that kind of success online: Viral Marketing. That's right, viral market itself is the one virus which has driven more sales of books, courses and seminars than any viral marketing campaign.
My dissatisfaction with these articles is most people don't acknowledge the basic methodology of captology or memetics. There simply are no new ideas here, except that online is somehow magically different.
Sorry again, that doesn't explain anything.
What makes online memetics seem different is the speed mind viruses spread. The biggest difference between online and offline is
friction. Regular viral outbreaks are contained by mobility and topography. These are not factors online. In other words, you don't have to get into your car and travel to the water cooler at work, with the number of employees around the water cooler limited by physical constraints.
The physical constraints which limit viral outbreaks offline don't exist online. That does not in any way mean there aren't other factors which limit viral spread online.
Most things never die, online or off. When Fax was the network, you'd get a joke or whatever and it would die out. Then a few years later when memory fades, the same joke pops up. Hula hoops are in, then out, then every few years someone gives it a new wrinkle and hula hoops make the news again.
In viral marketing terms that wrinkle is called mutation. It's what you need to fight the natural decay rate, and it's again something no viral marketing expert will ever reveal. (I'll explain why at the end of this post).
About the only difference between online and offline is, for all the archiving, nobody remembers a single thing that happened more than a month ago. So you get essentially the same viral marketing article every single year. Almost every single one asserting online marketing is different.
Marketing online is different. You don't get 100 Million units sold of any product marketed virally online. Hence the discussion here about making linkbait convert. And I'll retract that statement and issue an apology if Seth Godin can show me records of 100 million units of any of his books sold in any two year period. Heck, I'll even extend it to three years.
Memetic Mechanics 101 Other than happy accidents dubbed viral in retrospect, has any viral marketing expert ever told you what makes something viral? That's because my site is almost the only place you can find methodologies that underlie the balloon juice passed off as viral marketing.
About the only element needing explanation is Zeitgeist. An example is "the internet changes everything." That's the approach taken with the article which kicked off the thread. That the internet is so radically different that nothing else compares. And anybody that disagrees with that statement simply doesn't grok how radical the internet is.
But you do.
This is the fiber and structure of the Emperor's New Clothes. If you don't see the Emperor's new clothes, you just don't get it, you're on the outside looking in. I call it inner circle appeal.
If you're interested, check out
Cialdini's factors of influence, namely social proof, liking, authority.
Sorry, but human nature -- not the internet -- is the basic protein sequence of mind viruses. Sure they mutate, but none mutate to be based on silicon. Viruses travel via human nature. Nothing which happened in the last fifteen years has changed human nature enough to go from a point of word or mouth having a 'decay rate' and viral not having one.
The Trouble with Viral MarketingThe trouble with all this is not viral marketing, it is what kicked off this topic: conversions. Viral marketing online is mostly viral, marketing ...not so much.
First let's discuss linkbait. The payoff was never conversions, it was links and consequently SERP position.
That's what linkbait means.
And that's the problem with all of viral marketing online, the viral getting separated from objectives for the viral. So you get a bill for huge upsurges in bandwidth costs, and few sales.
Other than feel good, "We online are sooo much more with it than those old school marketers." Sorry, but I'll take 100 million units sold over a bill for $5000 in bandwidth costs any day of the week.
When these people get off their tragically hip horse, they'll find we can all just get along.
You get these viral successes that produce financial calamities when the viral becomes detached from the marketing objective for the viral. Bioengineering uses viral delivery mechanisms all the time.
The payload -- a conversion -- is delivered virally when the purchase is part of the viral mechanism itself.
Understanding this is like understanding the difference between brand awareness and bankable
brand preference. Brand awareness is where everyone knows you. Brand preference happens when everyone wants to buy your products once they know about them.
Companies have gone bankrupt thinking brand awareness and brand preference are the same thing.
For example, let's take a typical viral video on youtube. The way most people do it is showing someone doing a backflip. Provided that's novel enough, people spread the word. And more people see the video.
Now, for most viral efforts, it begins and ends there. It's cute, it's gimmicky, and ....nothing.
Viral for conversions is different. You have
a reason for showing a person doing a backflip. You show that the way you tailor your clothing, doing a backflip with an iPhone in your pocket will not produce a $400 jigsaw puzzle. Then, people who want to do similar videos
have to buy your stuff.
Take the Mentos and Coke. Had either company been on the ball, you would have seen joint venture marketing within hours of the video showing interest. You would have a cosponsored website directly traceable to the marketing departments of Coke and Mentos. The whole idea of marketing is that you tried to get a result. You can have a happy viral accident, but nobody can call the Coke + Mentos viral marketing because nobody meant for that to happen.
Worse yet, nobody calling themselves a marketer seems to have acknowledged or capitalized on it once it did happen.
Most of these "viral marketing" happenings are simply accidents. Marketers -- old school marketers all -- are simply taking credit for happy accidents and dubbing them "viral" in hindsight.
If you can make a marketing career from crossing your fingers and hoping the customers will bail you out, consistently and time-after-time, please write a book about that. Don't confuse it with viral marketing.
Designing Products to Go ViralThe number one thing you can do to say "I meant for it to happen like that" and take marketing credit is to redesign your product or service.
The number one thing testing shows is that hackability creates a viral hit. Right now, Apple seems to be sending mixed signals about your ability to do certain things with the iPhone.
For this to be an ideal viral marketing campaign, you would make it just difficult enough to change over the iPhone to work with other networks to make customers think 1) They got away with something 2) That they are skilled enough to be part of an elite, hip, hacker culture.
You can't Make anything go viral. However, such elements like design for hackability increase your odds that something will go viral. And while you can't take credit for 100% of the end result, you can at least have a credible claim on meaning for it to happen.
Designing things to be hackable, for mashups, and so on is something no so-called viral marketer will talk about for one reason. Almost to a person, male or female, they don't know what they are talking about.
Edited by DCrx, 21 October 2007 - 09:20 AM.
possible and that done properly 
