If Your Viral Marketing Guru Can’t Explain Memetics Design, Don’t Hire Them
Everyone wants his or her marketing message to be viral, have a viral aspect, and capitalize on viral marketing. But do people understand what it is that makes their marketing message worthy of being passed along? …Viral marketing is not an objective: IT IS AN INTEGRAL PART OF A CAMPAIGN STRATEGY THAT IS USED TO ACHIEVE OBJECTIVES.
— What Makes It Viral? By Kathleen Riley, The ClickZ Network
Viral marketing is arguably the most misunderstood, misdesigned, and most popular subject falling under the category of persuasion design. My dissatisfaction with articles on viral marketing is most people don’t acknowledge the basic methodology of captology or memetics.
Viral marketing has generally been confused with word–of–mouth success, largely in retrospect. In other words, somebody is rewriting history to explain the success after the fact rather than designing for viral success in the first place.
Memetic Mechanics: What Your Marketing Guru Won’t Tell You
An oft cited example of a viral event was the discovery of the extreme reaction when Coke and Mentos are combined. While viral, it’s not marketing. Had the marketing departments of Coke, Mentos, or both recognized and extended the buzz with a campaign, it could have been viral marketing.
Viral marketing generally fails when the marketing objectives separate from the viral vehicle. Like image advertising, people remember the entertainment but aren’t persuaded to buy. The result is bandwidth costs rise and sales don’t. Good viral. Bad Marketing.
Memes designed for viral marketing success have certain traits…
- Simplicity: Simple concept. Simple to remember. Simple to pass along.
- Prescriptive: For example Coke added to Mentos is basically a recipe, formula, or set of rules
- Effective: Brand awareness (entertaining) isn’t brand preference (making the cash register ring)
- Adapted: Think survival of the best fitted to the zeitgeist
- Provocative: Both in the sense of controversy and of slightly straining credulity
If you wanted to engineer a better meme for the list of guidelines I just gave, what should change? To fit the first point, simplicity, you might change provocative to daring, adding a point begining with the letter “R,” so the initials spell S.P.R.E.A.D.
And to fit the point about being effective, you would have to become a client in order to discover the key step missing from the SPREAD formula for what makes viral marketing successful. If you can’t understand effectiveness, you can’t put the word marketing with the word viral.
Savvy viral marketers understand brand awareness is only a step towards bankable brand preference. Companies have gone bankrupt confusing awareness for preference when it comes time to buy. Viral marketing has to be more persuasive than entertaining.
Snap on social chicklets and cut and paste refer–a–friend scripts don’t replace designing for viral effectiveness.
Designing Products and Services to Go Viral
Too often design is confined to superficial decoration rather than driving strategy. Consequently many products and services aren’t designed for viral compatibility. Lynda Rathbone explains “…merely suggesting email recipients forward your message to others is not viral marketing. Adding a line at the bottom of your email that reads “Feel free to forward this message to a friend” is not viral marketing at its best.” The first step is moving viral from a checkbox item to campaign strategy.
Next, make the mental leap from the 50’s manufacturing concepts of products and services to platforms. Apple sees platforms and codependent ecosystems of services and product where competitors see components. Since design thinking is system thinking, designers can help marketers here as well.
From the Google API supporting map mashups to goods designed for the prosumer category, modern companies see success linked to fostering a thriving development community. Design strategy is a key complement to marketing strategy.
Finally, interaction designers can assist marketers with personas and scenario tools. However these personas are different. Rather than support tasks, persuasion design personas support the influence goals of the designer. And, unlike spray–on generic components like referral boxes, everything from copy to visual merchandising is designed for a targeted audience.
Without a methodology behind it, viral marketing devolves into buzzwords. Persuasion design grounded in memetics and captology can be the substance which gives marketers real tools for viral marketing success.
Contact Design Crux to develop your viral marketing campaign today.
Resources
- So Many Elves. So Little Business is what happens when marketers know everything about building brand awareness and nothing about building bankable brand preference.
- Social networking sites and their role in new marketing takes on the bandwagon effect of MySpace and other social marketing, “…many, if not most brands, don’t lend themselves to be naturally community building entities on social media sites.”
- While the 1950s era product line mindset was waiting for the gPhone, a component, Google unveils cell phone software and alliance which is a platform for cell phones.
- Viral Marketing Isn’t Catching On With Consumers “A report from JupiterResearch found that in the past year [2007] only 15% of viral marketing efforts caught on with consumers and actually became viral.”
- Yes, You Can Predict Viral Marketing is good at explaining what is within the company’s control and what isn’t and the role hindsight bias plays.
- Contest gets the lowdown on what makes readers forward links few marketers are aware of contests for contagious media, who won, or why.
- The Tao of Linkbait method discusses what too many viral marketing experts don’t: How to develop the right technique to create a viral effect in a specific target audience which may not be accustomed to forward links. In contrast are random technical gimmicks dropped onto a page which may not fit the marketing objective.
- The Problem with Viral Branding “Simply getting people to talk about something—say, repeat a catch phrase from an ad—is not a particularly noteworthy event. Most such talk quickly fades from memory and, regardless, becomes detached from the meaning of the story. What sticks are stories that affect how people think about themselves in the world. The problem with the viral model is that it assumes that any communication is good as long as it's retold. Much more important, however, is what people remember and use symbolically in their everyday lives.”
- Brand and Branding is a good rundown of levels which include brand awareness, preference and loyalty. Too often viral marketing provides brand awareness without brand preference.
- Personas and the customer decision–making process begins to show the dawning realization amongst interaction designers personas are irrelevant unless you’re trying to influence user decision making. Also shows a useful model of the buying decision cycle.
- iPod, iPhone, iTV: Apple's New Platform explains the market advantages of system thinking (platforms) over reductionist component thinking. Apple Promises Third–Party SDK for iPhone, iPod Touch to facilitate the iPhone ecosystem’s success. The future of marketing strategy is competing business ecosystems which will either support or fail to support innovation.
- Apple Builds Ecosystem With iPod Touch Screen “Apple unveiled a partnership with Starbucks will result in free Wi-Fi access in its coffee shops for iPhone or iPod Touch owners who want to download music.”
- Be more persuasive “Making something usable doesn’t necessarily mean it will be successful. Yes, people can find things, but what will get them to transact?”
- What Makes It Viral? Strips off the buzzwords and gets down to business. Vital for clients wanting a quick intoduction to what they are actually buying when they use the term viral marketing.