experience matters

Jeana Anderson | Critical Mass Chicago

Going viral: For the purposes of this blog post, I’m going to define that as an idea, phrase or a piece of rich media being replicated and shared, spreading with the speed and intensity of a viral infection. A very popular meme.

Memes are an insanely interesting characteristic of the social media, especially for those who are in the business of harnessing the power of social for brands. These viral fads go through the same cycles as fashion and music. The unique kids adopt the meme or trend first; they feel a sense of ownership or that they’ve discovered this piece of content. The masses sniff this out and start adopting the meme; they forward it to all of their gchat buddies. A member of the masses sends said piece of content onto one of the early adopters who replies with “I saw that like a month ago.” The masses overplay and click-by- click kill this trend, bringing it to “viral” status. The cool kids move onto the next thing.

As a rule, it’s difficult for large brands to grab a hold of these large-scale trends and insert themselves in a relevant way while the trends are still hot. On the flip side, content creators have been attaching their inevitably viral blogs, tweets and videos to brands in ways that stick and get forwarded down the chain-of-cool. A notable example is Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell. This serves as a terrific case study, so please bear with me as I do not wish to imply that you, dear reader, have not seen this video or heard this song. After the original song was posted to YouTube, several video iterations emerged as users adopted it and tweaked it to their own tastes. The combined total views of these videos mention Pizza Hut and Taco Bell thousands of times. However, as the meme reaches the main stream, its status as “cool” has effectively been killed.

It’s fairly safe to say that starting a viral movement requires the leader, or brand, to have the guts to stand out as different. More important than that, however, is a well educated community that collectively feels listened to by a humanized brand. Advocates. With processes in place to address concerns and praise positive contributions to a movement, the principles of Derek Siver’s TED talk apply. Siver outlines the importance of nurturing the first few followers of any movement. Without the first advocate or follower, the brand isn’t leading a movement; it’s just a “lone nut.”

Aside from the initial idea and execution, the entire movement is on the shoulders of the advocates. Creating the type of content that most brands are comfortable with requires a production budget and “talent,” but devoting a spend on something that may or may not be adopted by the community is risky. I would guess that Ford went through a similar thought process as it inevitably put a huge volume of its social content creation for the Ford Fiesta in the hands of its advocates. The brand acted as a leader, posing its community with challenges that required creating cool content with the Ford Fiesta in the background.

As far as going viral is concerned, this model is ideal: be the kind of inspiring leader that isn’t rigid about ideas for content. Allow the first follower to have the creative license to be just as inspiring as the brand itself.

Jeana is a Community Manager in our Chicago office.