We have been doing a lot of tracking looking at traffic numbers, comments, and ratings for viral videos. The results are often disappointing. Most “virals” don’t go viral. A common characteristic in virals is that they are commissioned, scripted, shot and even released without any testing. Given the nature of the internet, this is nuts.
YouTube, Vimeo, Daily Motion don’t charge you to post a video. The client can easily send a link to a few dozen testers to see if they like it. Even before that stage companies like Unruly Media (who specialise in viral seeding) can take a look at your script and tell you if it satisfies key criteria. It should be (according to them) Funny or Sexy or Shocking or Spectacular or Original or Moving or Illuminating.
In short the internet lowers the barrier to testing an idea, to see if it really works. Then you can commission more of a great idea and quietly forget about a bad one.
Really good creative – of course – can do a fantastic job for a brand. Little Gordon – the campaign for the website caterer.com – has had an extraordinary 2.7m views – only 75,000 were paid for with viral “seeding”. [Thanks to Steve Filler - of Unruly Media - for the stats]
Strangely enough Jane Copland at the recent SEO Expert Training in London mentioned that one of her own posts went viral 8 months later. In spite of her trying to make it go a bit viral when she launched.
So I think the money/time spent on focus groups and testing here would be better spent on getting another piece out there. Of course, it the viral launch is going to use a lot of resources, some kind of pre-testing is in order, even if it’s sending it to a dozen honest friends (with some compatibility with the target market).
It’s an interesting point … Sometimes ideas hang around for months before achieving currency. Professor Nutt, UK government adviser on drugs, critiqued government policy on drugs in a speech to Centre for Crime and Justice Studies at King’s College London in July 2009. It wasn’t until the speech was published that there was a response. In this case it was a press release which sparked the interest. Once the media gave the paper the spin “taking ecstasy safe as horse riding” government minister Alan Johnson sacked the professor from his unpaid position offering advice on drug classification.