In light of the recent “Harlem Shake” and other such viral nuances, I wondered what the possibility for creating advertising designed to go viral in the future was? If it could be at least moderately predicted the behaviour of a video or such a social trend, imagine the power and outreach such a campaign could achieve!
I look at Old Spice as an example, and I wonder how it couldn’t go viral, its hilarious and ridiculous, but not so silly that it would ward off people from sharing it with their friends or colleges. And I believe that is the key, that people will be excited to share it, isn’t that what viral is all about? And yes, of course it is, is the answer. People (in my opinion) want to have things to share and add to their discussions, its up to the marketing people to give them their stories to tell.
Now perhaps I’m being naive in how the social universe works, but I can think of so many examples of this phenomenon, and in the vast majority of cases I either discovered them on my own, or, as the case more often is, I was informed of it by a friend. So why don’t more companies aim to incorporate the viral platform to their advertising? It’s fairly cheap, effective and entertaining!
I found this slideshow about “The future of advertising in 2020” to be interesting, particularly slide 33 which emphasizes how we need to “properly understand how things spread through populations,” took the words right out of my blog. If this could be better understood, I think the power to deliver more meaningful advertising would be hugely significant to the way companies spread their messages. Advertise on a more human level and more humans will talk about it.
As a fun example, Doritos’ contest for their super bowl commercials. Genius, free marketing, and even the “loser’s” ads still ended up racking up views. And to help my point throughout, here is the winning Doritos commercial: Goat 4 Sale
Image: http://pixel.nymag.com/imgs/daily/vulture/2012/09/24/24-psy.o.jpg/a_250x375.jpg