One of the questions people ask me most in this business (just after “Do you really have to charge me for that?” and “Can I see something tomorrow?) is “Can you make a viral component for this?” I always cringe when I hear it. Even now, after all this time, the phrase “viral marketing” seems really cheesy. Hasn’t marketing always been based on word of mouth? Do we have to give it a disease-riddled name just because the medium has changed? My protestations aside, the term has stuck, and for better or worse, we at the Barbarian Group have done a fair amount of it. My coworkers and I always have a pretty good idea, before we even finish, whether it would fly or not. We’ve noticed a few consistent factors, and I’ve boiled them down to 5 handy rules on viral marketing:

1. Viral Marketing is neither e-cards, nor is it an add-on. All too often potential clients want to cover all the bases with one interactive initiative. They want to build what they think is an robust site, and then simply tack on some e-cards to it, to give it a viral component. Always remember: there has to be a compelling reason for the user to send around a link or a site: The ability for a user to spread the word does not equate with a reason for him/her to bother.


2. Accept that you may not be able to control your brand completely with good viral marketing. “Branding” has been so dominant in advertising theory for so long now, we often forget that it’s just one theory. A good one, to be sure, but it has its limits. Viral Marketing cannot necessarily be branded. I’ve found it’s best to be 100% up-front about this with your client, from the beginning. The last thing you want to have happen is to develop an amazingly funny, viral video and have the client insist that their logo and tagline end it. Your target market is amazingly media savvy – that’s why you’re trying to get to them with viral marketing and not a print ad, right? – and they will resenting any overt manipulation. In general, viral marketing works because it conveys the sense that a company is about more than money and branding, that it has the same sense of fun and the same worldview as its customers. This worldview is not a corporate, branded one.


3. Viral Marketing is especially susceptible to too many cooks in the kitchen. In retrospect, this is the single biggest stumbling block for good viral marketing. A great idea is born, and between the great idea and the public finally experiencing it, there are any number of intermediate stages of approval – an agency creative, his/her superior, the client, the client’s boss, the president of the client company and, if you’re uniquely unlucky, there’s a parent company with a whole new batch of stakeholders. When people ask us “why did such-and-such campaign get so successful?”, 9 times out of 10, it’s because no one was paying attention to us. Brand managers were on vacation, or they didn’t care about interactive. When that’s not an option, remember that the ability to massage your work unfettered through these approvals, along with the ability to secretly skip over them, is as important as a good idea when it comes to viral marketing.


4. Trust your instincts, but do a little market testing. If you don’t think it’s funny, no one else will either. Listen to yourself as you work on the campaign. You’ll know, deep down, if it’s going to work or not. If you have doubts, don’t ignore them. And don’t send something out in the world if you don’t genuinely think it will be effective. That being said, the echo chamber is a real risk. Find some people in the demographic, and pitch the idea to them. If the bulk of them don’t laugh right away, it might be time to head back to the drawing board.

</li>Sometimes, even the best creative needs a little push. It’s easy to get dogmatic about viral marketing and say “if it’s good, it’ll take right off.” But the internet is a big place, and unless you really know how to work it and drive traffic immediately, it can be hard to get people to notice your endeavors. We’ve had campaigns sit on the web for months before they took off, and by then it can be too late. Consider a small banner campaign to kick things off, or, better yet, think about hiring a firm to “seed” the campaign (I know, viral seeding. Ick). A relatively small investment here can mean the difference between a lost investment or a fantastic ROI.

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