Is there such a thing as instant virality?
By: Karan Verma
Tags: Social Media, Social Media Campaign, Marketing, Viral Marketing

In the last week’s post I showed how over time genuine influencers can make a difference in creating a loyal set of audiences for any brand. However, there are always some brands that are after instantly becoming famous. What should such brands do?

Before we dive deeper into the question let’s understand that this sort of an attempt at best will only bring a blip in the viewership of your content. See the picture below. You could imagine this yellow line to be any number in your digital strategy, from reach to engagement to impressions, etc.

A blip in the social media metrics

One may argue that if we create enough blips such as these we’d end up in a better position as far as increasing the number of our loyal customers are concerned. Well, I’d say this is a matter of return on investment and the nature and personality of the brand and its custodians. There is no right or wrong here but only what suits you best. In my opinion though, the turtle always beats the rabbit. But again this post is about what if a brand needs to immediately become famous, what should its managers consider before planning their campaigns?

Here’s what they should consider…

Seemingly born overnight, a new brand or a product craze happens when collectively, a product and a brand get to be noticed consistently in a large segment of the population. It needs consistent harping about the message in the influence circles and driving them to usage. Most of the time it is accompanied by a breakthrough idea / message, think how Uber launched in India (with their super premium cars they created trial instantly). None of the domestic players (Meru, Mega Cabs, Ola, etc.) at the time could not do what Uber did in one go. It was the right mix of shock and awe coupled with consistent messaging.

To be able to create that shock and awe along with ensuring usage, we must target platforms and strategies to, one, reach the right audience with, two, a strong awe inspiring message and ensure usage with, three, pushing media spends whenever someone searches for the services we provide to be able to reach the threshold level of audience.

Let’s take each of these one by one.

1. reach the right audience

2. a strong awe inspiring message to ensure usage

3. pushing media spends to reach threshold level audience

Reach the right audience

“If you want to party, you have to go where the party is”, if you want your ideas to spread, you need to be involved in the online communities of people who actively share. To ensure that we will need to make enough key people our mouth piece. These key people in turn influence these actively sharing people. Read more about how to pick your set of influencers in the previous post here.

A strong awe inspiring message to ensure usage

Ask your self what do people care about? People don’t care about your brand / product. What people care about is themselves and ways to solve their problems (read narcissists). People also like to be entertained and to be a part of something remarkable. Thus, making a remarkable and big enough idea / message / experience is important. Is there a way we can make a remarkable message that taps into their narcism?

To be able to spread the message fast enough it also needs to be simple. I hear you ask, now simple too? Well yes, the message needs to be simple yet remarkable. Consider this, while mass media can introduce a new idea, most people depend on subjective evaluations from people they know and trust when deciding whether to adopt an idea or not. Ideas spread through people copying what others do — “I’ll Have What She’s Having” mentality. And so it will be important to make the message in a manner that it is simple enough for people to replicate. Simple and immediate, the time and effort required to replicate the idea should be the least possible since people generally do not have time.

Another important ingredient is for it to be selfless or bigger than themselves. Most often these big ideas that spread instantly are selfless, think ALS Ice Bucket Challenge. People want to own the idea that they share, when they share it they say, “I found it and I want you to see it.” A message from another owner such as a brand does not sit well in this sentiment. However, a selfless message about an emotion or society in general fit much better. Besides, there is a narcism angle to sharing here too. If I can feature myself or my ability in performing the idea / sharing the message then I am easily convinced to do it.

Okay, this is well understood you may be thinking, but where should I start, what can the idea be about and how to bring it back to the brand?

Here’s where you need to start. You need to start at a culturally tense topic. The attempt should be to find a universal strand of emotion or culturally tense topic within the target segment. A message that is charged with cultural intensity connects with everyone in the audience and if the message can take you through an unexpected twist then it will tend to wow the audience and if all other factors are conducive sharing becomes more obvious. For instance, we did a campaign called the Breaking Stereotypes for Truly Madly. It reached 7 million people in 45 days. See some visuals here.

Pushing media spends to reach threshold level audience

This is the easy part. If you have confidence in your message just make sure enough people are exposed to it. The rule of thumb here is to ensure a wide net. Use all possible means of exposing the target audience to your message. Remember, repetition is the key. When you activate one channel for media spends ask your self is there another place we can reach the target audience at and then activate that.

Do as much and see whether it changes the results for you. Goes without saying that a product / service worth your audiences’ while is a prerequisite. I’ll be happy to discuss any specific questions or experiences, feel free to write to me in comments.