Writing about the reason there has been so many horrible viral campaigns, Scott Donation makes a point that absolutely needs to be understood by any online marketer. The bottom line of what he says is the reason for this is that people are doing it because everybody else is doing it.
He says concerning the Internet that he "first noticed this circa 1995, when the cry was, "Get me a website!" Why? "I don't know, because everyone's got one." A few years later it was, "We need to do something in branded entertainment!" Great, what's the concept? "How do I know? I just want to be able to tell the boys on the 6:12 that we're on the cutting edge. They're all doing it." You could probably trace this all the way back to Adam, who bit the apple because Eve did. It was a bad idea then, and still is today."
Warren Buffett calls this the "institutional imperative." He says that it's one of the most damaging reasons for doing something that a company or manager can base something upon.
Donation also adds that some of the reasons the campaigns are extremely bad in some cases are because "They are not the end result of an actual idea or strategy but are born of a desperate desire to do something, anything, in the new-media space."
To me one of the things to understand is that viral marketing isn't anything new whatsoever. It's just another name for what we called word-of-mouth years ago. The difference is that it's done online instead of offline in the case of online businesses.
How can we keep ourselves from doing things from this perspective? It goes back to understanding why your company exists and its purpose - that's where you start any ad campaign from. Who is the target audience you serve? How does the campaign connect to who your company is? Are you speaking with an authentic voice?
These are the types of things that determine the success of any marketing campaign that gives it a legitimate chance at going viral.
Doing it because everybody else is doing it, without understanding these things, is an exercise in futility. Who your company is and what it represents shouldn't change ever. That is the starting point of any marketing strategy and effort.
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