Lately, your company has been in think tanks discussing ways to deliver in the realms of social media. Your Facebook page and Twitter accounts aren’t driving the interest you anticipated. Seeding viral content on a regular basis is difficult. You need a next step and searching for a new social media platform seems redundant (and it is). But before you go running to re-departmentalize your PR division to have them solely focus on exercising a major viral campaign, consider – viral marketing campaigns have no set formula or recipe to ensure their success. The measurables of digital marketing are still being quantified. Metrics include everything from hits, time spent on site, retweets, sharing, forwarding, digging, liking, views etc. And so far, marketers are unsure how many YouTube views = a Twitter retweet. So, before you spend any amount of company $$ or resources on your next digital marketing campaign, review the successes of others’ attempts at viral grandeur.
Today, an Internet phenomenon or “meme” is a piece of information that reaches a vast group of people strictly by word-of-mouth, person to person sharing. Not limited to video – memes come in all shapes and sizes, from Facebook groups to trending topics, almost any virtual avenue with multiple engaged users can be a springboard for the next meme. Famous memes become Internet inside-jokes shared exponentially like YouTube phenomena “Rick Rolling” and “David After Dentist”. WOM marketing has no measurable or formulaic approach. There are, of course, best practices to follow in order to reach your potential audience of millions – but in some ways, luck has a lot to do with it. One thing that can be agreed upon is the emotion any Internet phenomenon evokes upon first watch. The reaction is always strong. Although some may argue otherwise, humor doesn’t define viral potential but categorically, it doesn’t hurt. Most viral videos are humorous because humor is an easy way to incite strong emotion from users – and users pass it on because of their desire to share experiences with others– in the same way myth and ritual, fads and trends have existed organically throughout human culture.
The anatomy of a meme:
1. Memes are first and foremost, memorable.
2. Usually, displayed on a medium that has a tell-a-friend feature.
3. No formulaic approach to meming, but if there is one – it’s humor.
Memes are the unconquered marketing domain. They are measured in hilarity, absurdity, or shock value. Getting your next advertisement to go viral is invaluable. It places your brand in front of an audience of millions with little to no legwork after its initial production. Turning your digital campaign into a recognizable meme allows your brand an opportunity to have major social impact, placing your company on the tip of everyone’s tongue for a period of time. Not to mention that your viewers (new and old) will be more likely to link back to your brand page.
But there’s no need to reinvent the wheel to produce viral content. Best leave meming up to the amateurs and become a distributor, a discoverer of fresh viral content rather than a creator or producer of it.
Take these campaigns for instance:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_6tdoaIdKM
http://www.youtube.com/user/itsthegecko#p/u/7/HItwu7PNdNo
Both Visio and Geico recently capitalized on the success of Gary William Brolsma AKA “The Numa Numa Guy” by incorporating him into their latest advertisement campaigns. The younger demographic responds well to recognizable icons of Internet culture due to their own potential to become famous in the same way Gary has become famous – by being completely original. Hiring a model or actor to represent your brand is dated and expensive. Instead, consider hiring that kid on YouTube who has had a few million hits and thousands of subscribers. Utilize Google trends/diagnostics to estimate the staying power of the viral content you wish to capitalize on and be sure to quickly mobilize your resources for a trend that has a large audience, but may be fleeting.
A social media department will be key down the road, but don’t go out and hire the most impressive twitter-er on your block just yet. Bring in a 3rd party marketing specialist to assess your needs and viral potential. For now, extrapoloating on what America’s Funniest Home Videos has done for years is a best practice: have your users create the viral content for you with a video contest and award prizes to the best of the bunch. This strategy will bring you a pool of fresh content and who knows, one of them may be the next meme.