interested in innovation and creativity

What is viral?

Posted: July 3rd, 2006 | Author: | Filed under: Marketing | 3 Comments »

Good content worth sharing? Remarkable – as Seth says remarkable means “worth mentioning”, here are some ideas as to why someone would take the time to pass it along.

  • Surprising – Is there a twist?
  • Shocking – People like to be grossed out
  • Funny – People like to laugh, this can range from topical, satirical, and football in the groin
  • Original – Being the first is always good
  • Clever – T-shirt folding for instance, not funny, not shocking, just clever
  • Satirical/Subversive – Does it tweak someone’s nose? Colbert for instance

I’m sure Mack at the viral garden will be able to add to this list, but this is a start.

G4 is really reaping the rewards of playing in the social media space, not only does it have lots of podcasts, but it’s little “star trek/cribs” parody has been viewed over a million times on YouTube.

Views: 1,058,390
Comments: 894
Favorited: 6807 times

So what is that? a 60 second spot? An ad that people have not only chosen to watch, but have chosen to share?

Maybe advertising 2.0 is something worth watching in it’s own right?

  • http://nomansblog.typepad.com/ Asi

    This is a very interesting question and i think that it might be a good idea to start collecting some data on succesful virals (whats a succesful viral today? over 10k? 100k 500k? a million perhaps?) and try to generate some hypothesis.

    personally I think that this “lets do a viral” culture is both an opprtunity to experiment and a danger to creativity at the same time. too many stupid ideas that wouldn’t gone through in the ATL world are being compromised and when it comes from brands there is potentially damage to creative reputation.

    don’t over use!

    A.

  • http://moblogsmoproblems.blogspot.com Mack Collier

    Karl I’ve only seen a couple of episodes for Star Trek 2.0 (Since it has the unfortunate luck of competing with MASH on Hallmark for my viewing attention), but the chat, ‘Spock-Market’, and updates on ‘red-shirt deaths’, and the like, are all hilarious. And then you have the commercials. Wizards, a comic/collectible magazine, did something similar with Megos, acting out scenes with the figures, and they were just as popular.

    Would be interesting to see what G4′s ratings are for Star Trek 2,0, my guess is they are far ahead of the other time slots, and of the ratings for the regular versions of the original Star Trek that G4 shows.

  • http://nomansblog.typepad.com/ Asi

    expanding the conversation:

    http://nomansblog.typepad.com/no_mans_blog/2006/07/virals_great_op.html

    keep up the great work!

    A.