Return On Subscriber - Email Marketing Blog

I was having a discussion with our director of new technologies, creative director, and one of our Flash developers talking about what is viral. Now many campaigns have touted themselves as Viral and any project that Crispin Porter touches is labeled viral. Nearly every agency that has ever come up with an advergame or Flash-based referral campaign is “viral.” At various Ad Club meetings and networking events I have overheard conversations between agencies and big prospects explaining how well they “do viral” and then having to explain for 5 minutes the major viral campaign they ran and how it worked.

If you ever have to explain in any type of detail what your viral campaign is, IT IS NOT VIRAL.

A viral campaign needs to be described in one sentence or less or even better is for you to just say the name of the campaign and everyone within earshot knows what you are talking about. Now this does not mean you have to explain all of the inter-workings, but the concept must be clear and readily understood.

I truly think that for a campaign to be considered viral, it must jump into everyday discussion or pop culture.

I believe that agencies are setting themselves up for failure if they tout how well they do “true viral” and companies need to understand that viral means letting go and don’t be afraid.

A number of companies have approached us for viral campaigns but they want to lock down the flexibility the user has or they want “Monk-e-Mail” but don