On a daily basis you can find tricks, how to’s, rules, … to make sure your viral marketing will stand out. This interests me quite a lot, but honestly I never read an article that stood out. Things like “make a great ad”, “have people talk about it”, “share it with others”, … don’t really learn you a lot do they.
Then I read this post from Thomas Baekdal which I think does nail it down. Still, there will always an element about viral advertising that is hard to define. I don’t think you can ever be 100% sure whether your ad will go viral or not but still this is a good start (full story here).
- Make people feel something
- Do something unexpected
- Do not try to make advertisements
- Make sequels
- Allow sharing, downloading & embedding
- Connect with comments
- Never restrict access
Some will add the effect of fans creating spoofs of the original campaign as a driver for the viral effect, but I think you already got a winner when this happens. I don’t think it’s a necessary element to get it started.
It will always remain a difficult part of advertising and also a lot of ads that went viral were actually never designed to be (remember Berlitz?). A lot of the comments you can find on viral advertising also come from people that have never created one themselves. We did one recently on Messenger and this one is definitely easier said than done. If you have other tricks & learnings then please share them.
Tags: viral advertising, spoof, wom, word of mouth, tricks
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