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How to have viral success- experiment and do lots of it
March 15, 2007
Dan Germain is the creative director at one of the UK’s smartest brands, Innocent Drinks.
Dan’s been the victim of a virus, or rather, his company Innocent has.
A few weeks back a Swedish agency, Peacock did a spec TV ad for them. Innocent didn’t approve the spot as they didn’t think it was quite “them”.
Now it has gotten up onto YouTube and is garnering a lot of attention.
Dan’s response to this event is great and there’s a real gem of wisdom in here; the notion that’s so often overlooked, that viral is unpredictable and uncontrollable, that you can’t plan it like a regular media campaign and because of this, you have to do lots of it and keep trying to see what stuff sticks.
“I guess that when it started to spread on the web, it became ‘viral’. ‘Viral’ is my least favourite term in the pantheon of adspeak, but it did make me take five minutes to have a think about how stuff ‘becomes’ viral? How does it spread?
The answer is, of course, that nobody really knows. Nobody can guarantee viralness. In this case, the fact that it’s a bit weird and that it’s also at odds (tonally) with what people have seen from us before means that it’s interesting/unusual. Sometimes weird is good. Unexpected is good.
So I’m guessing that some people are more likely to want to watch it than an innocent ad that features a pile of fruit and a packshot. People like new and unusual, especially on the web.
Of course, I’m still extremely wary of those who talk about ‘viral’. I believe that the people who email me every day, telling me that they can make us excellent viral clips at the drop of a hat, are missing the point. You can’t make things viral to order.
But you can do something else if you want to make stuff that people will send to their friends and post on their blogs. I think it’s fairly simple. The more stuff you make, the more chance there is of something turning out to be good. And then people will watch it.
So in 2007 we will be making more stuff, writing more stuff, posting more stuff and filming more stuff. Some of it will be rubbish and some of it might work. And seeing as we don’t know which bits will work until we’ve done them, I guess we’d better get cracking.”
Risk, experimentation and obviously, failure are words brands are going to have to start getting used to.
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