Principle 7: Interest and then engage

"We want something viral."

It’s the call of the client to the marketer.

Here’s the problem when a client requests something viral. You can’t “buy” a viral campaign. When you purchase a commercial on TV, the network has complete control of distribution and therefore they can deliver to you an audience based on the audience they’ve measured that’s coming to consume the network’s content. Since you’re purchasing an audience upfront, the quality of your creative has no bearing on the size of your viewing audience. Your audience is based on how much you’re willing to pay a TV station or network to get access to their audience.

When you purchase an ad in a magazine or on a TV network, there’s little feedback on how compelling the content really is. Conversely, in the online world, content is the factor that determines your audience and the feedback is often immediately available. That content’s quality will be determined by a community of word-of-mouth users who decide whether your information will or will not get an audience.

New media dies in debate

Large corporations are not equipped to handle a viral campaign. All viral content requires risk. And the larger and more public the company, the less risk they’re often willing to take.

Personally, every time I pitch a new media campaign I get locked in endless debate as to what will happen if we let this information get out. I spend a lot of time explaining and convincing.

As I talk each person wants to discuss, meet, and get sign-off from twenty-three departments before anything happens. And the reason nothing’s happening is because these three people have meetings this day, and this person is on vacation until next week, and ultimately you need to keep pitching and re-pitching ideas to people over and over, explaining concepts and new media to people who have never experienced what you’re trying to explain. So naturally they’re a little hesitant to give you thousands of dollars for something they don’t understand.

And during all this delay, some kid in the Midwest creates a silly video of him jumping up and down (e.g. the Numa Numa video) and gets the audience that the marketers were endlessly debating about hoping they could get.

Every marketer wants something viral because they see what it can do. With every successful viral campaign someone got a much larger audience than they paid for. Of course a marketer wants that. It’s called, “Give me something for free.” And that’s what they think when they request a viral campaign.

A request for viral content is asking a marketer to control a distribution channel for which they have no control.

Instead of putting the cart before the horse by requesting a viral campaign, think first about what content it is you and your clients want to create. And then think about how you can make it as entertaining, informative, and accessible to your audience as possible. If you focus on those three elements, your content will find its audience.

Ultimately, you have to interest people. You have to find that core nerve that gets them so excited that they click through. That requires simple copywriting skills like knowing how to write a good headline and understanding what are, as marketers tell you, your audience’s pain points.

If you’re skilled enough to incite interest, don’t leave them hanging. Engage. That means reach out. Make it easy for them to contact you, the author, or other like-minded people.

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