What is Viral Marketing?
Viral Marketing is the use of an audience to spread your marketing message. If you can tell two friends, and they tell two friends and so on and so forth until your game will become part of millions of conversations and becomes the next blockbuster hit…
If only it were that easy.
Malcolm Gladwell talks about the creation of social epidemics and what makes them work in his novel The Tipping Point. In his book, Gladwell Talks about those rules that are crucial to a successful social epidemic. The Three Rules are “The Law of the Few”, “The Stickiness Factor”, and “The Power of Context”
It took Gladwell a novel to explain all of these factors, but I will briefly touch on these three rules and their relation to viral videos.
Viral videos are being investigated by many marketing professionals as a cheap and effective way to spread their message to the masses. However, it can be a delicate balance to create a video that will catch your audience’s attention and resonate with them enough that they want to share it.
Take a look on YouTube… millions of videos… 150k new uploaded per day. So what will make your video get more visibility than the hottest new Music Video or Celebrity blooper? Or your hardest competition; a gay unicorn?
Context:
First, you need to make sure that your viral video resonates with your audience. The Believe campaign for Halo 3 spoke in the language of its audience and the message had context. With over 8 million views on YouTube, the ad spoke to an audience that was foaming at the mouth for the last installment of the story. The video also spoke to the humanity of Master Chief and gave a wider audience the opportunity to engage with the brand. Microsoft debuted the Halo 3 Believe campaign at just the right time and in the right forum to have context for its audience.
Sticky:
It needs to be memorable. Easily said but not so easily done. The Tipping Point author says that stickiness may go against conventional wisdom. Sticky videos are easy to understand, easily recallable, and rewatchable, not racy or complex. Gladwell illustrated stickiness through the success of children’s shows Sesame Street and Blue’s Clues. But when talking about a video on the internet competing against millions, the same principals apply. Look at the current political campaign to see how Barack Obama has created a sticky message that had relevance and over 13 million views on YouTube, helping to grow support and create a campaign comprising of $5 and $10 contributions that broke records for campaign fundraising. “Yes We Can”, is a message easy to understand, remember, and repeat.
The Few:
A few people can make a world of difference. Gladwell identifies these movers and shakers in a social epidemic as the connectors, mavens, and salesmen. Connectors are the people who bring us together, Mavens are those who have specialized knowledge, and Salesmen are those with exceptional charisma who can persuade others. For any viral campaign (even a small budget video] harnessing these individuals is critical to your success. 2K Games understood this with the release of BioShock. By involving the game community in the development and marketing of the game, they created a grassroots movement that spread virally among their audience. Have a video that you want spread virally? Don’t just throw it on YouTube… distribute it to those bloggers and experts of gaming that the audience trusts. Let them know how important they are to you and if you give them a sticky product with context they will help it to spread.
Even though a viral video can be seen as a cheap solution to marketing your game, it does take quite a bit of work to deliver a video that will work with your audience and find the tools for it to spread properly. There are no guarantees and no results without continued work. Your infection in the public consciousness may not last long unless you keep up your attacks.