Virality. Formula or fortune?

Have you ever wondered why some viral videos circulate the Internet in a couple of days, gaining millions of likes, while others, compiled according to the same rules, at first glance very similar in model, do not differ even in friends? The second case is mainly known to those who themselves tried to sit on the tail of the self-organizing power of social communities.
In this article, I will analyze successful and not very viral ads from the point of view of a startup and offer my version of a viral tool for stress testing a video chat platform.
To begin with, what is virality ?
In marketing, an ad is called viral if its speed of distribution assumes the character of a geometric progression. In terms of effect, virality is determined only by the speed of propagation. In this vein, the saying is appropriate: "The news diverges like a shameful disease in a harem."
In theory, everything is clear and obvious, until you get down to business yourself :-)
Speed ​​can be measured after the project is launched, if the goal is to create such an advertisement, the question arises: “How?”
What needs to be done so that people themselves pass this information to each other? Indeed, in modern society, the brain uses more and more sophisticated contraceptives from sticky advertising. Caught the idea that specifically look away from the running line on the street? Or do you try your best not to read the leaflet that was taken from a pretty girl near the metro and, as soon as you crumple it, throw it in an urn or a hole in a post?
I caught myself turning over the stand for the mug with the inscription in red letters “Komus”, because I get the impression that some brand is zombifying me, trying to crawl into my head without permission.
On the other hand, on the same table, there is a card on which it says "Morning begins with good coffee." I could have removed it for a long time, but the effect is the opposite - it lifts my mood without causing any phobias. If you turn it over and look at the small letters, it becomes clear whose work it is. Emotions are polar different.
Therefore, our task is to endow the message with disarming kindness and trust. So that people don’t think about wearing contraceptives when they reward each other, friend, friend, friend with this our “joy”.

Market analysis

For a better understanding of the process, I propose to consider the successful implementation of viral projects:
1. I consider the advertisement of cheap Czechs from Centro to be an absolute masterpiece, where a nice girl poses right in front of the hood of a spying machine
2. Button Make everything good . A rare project manager did not indulge her, choosing between suicide, dismissal and taking a triple dose of amphetamine
3. LG TVs were very pleased with the creators
4. On the verge of a masterpiece, I consider the advertisement for the film Kamen with Fair Svetlakov. So that there is no doubt that this is a fake, here is a record of another take.

Of the unsuccessful examples I can cite Oleg Tinkov , who evenHabré tried to post something revolutionary, but quickly realized that he needed to be able to play such games with the habro-audience, and the post was closed. As I understand it, this was due to a wave of critical reviews. Correct me if someone participated in the discussion and knows more. The average rate of likes of his ads is 20-25, but the nature of their presentation clearly claims to be viral.

What are the reasons?

Why, in one case, an ad shoots like an angry bird in a pig, and in another it gets stuck on your personal page with a dozen likes? What qualities should an advertisement have for an exponential set of views?
Here is my version, which can be smashed to smithereens in the comments:
1. Non-affiliation - advertising should look like information taken and posted on the network by a person who does not want to sell you anything
2. Emotionality - the tool should throw joy or anger or fear , in general, something very strong
3. Sensationalism - this quality is rare, and it is difficult to suck it out of the finger. And since sensations are not predicted, I propose to exclude this element from the production chain
4. Integration of the target message is, in my opinion, the most difficult, because you need to strike a balance between the complexity of brand recognition and obsession. For example, if brand recognition is made unobvious, then a wave of emotions will simply pass by your power plant, making a lot of useless splashes. As an example of such a move, I think a QR code that hung on all shields for a long time, which was almost impossible to read while driving a car, and the percentage of people reading QR is much less than potential 4G users, which were advertised in this way. I learned that this is a megaphone only because I myself was preparing a strategy for introducing a service that is unknown to anyone so far on the federal market that can change everyone’s life (roughly built in :-)).
This is what the megaphone advertisement looked like. Tens of millions of rubles of advertising budget in the pipe?

The opposite side of the coin can be considered the film "Night Watch" part one. Let me remind you that there Gosha Kutsenko says advertising slogans, the battle is fought on the MTS logo and so on. This caused a negative reaction, and not the fact that optimally affected sales. If I am not mistaken, the FAS appealed to the filmmakers with complaints .


Viral tool
In order not to turn into philosophers, and not make judgments only on the basis of theory, we decided to launch our first potentially viral mechanism. This idea came up with a visit to a lecture by Jeff Howe - Crowdsourcing - in Digital October. Jeff very interestingly told how, like Mendeleev, it dawned on him and he coined the word and became world famous. Nothing was said about how to use crowdsourcing, how to manage and where to look. But the idea "with a string of thread, I like Mercedes" beckoned.
The time came when we needed a load test for video communication servers. This is necessary to determine the boundaries of the load and to draw up a plan for purchasing servers (or optimizing the code :-))
The first attempt was here
In two days, 2,000 people passed, but they arrived so evenly that the servers did not feel anything. In addition, 90% of people were without cameras, and when they saw a text chat, they indulged in urogenital conversations with pleasure.
This time we decided to apply a strategy that was once peeped by the same guys, which, unfortunately, I did not remember.

Short excursion:

My beloved somehow sent a link and suggested registering for a free webinar, where they would tell how to become happy, successful in sex and business, and all that stuff. When I clicked on the link, the page described about the same. There was one field where you need to enter email. It became curious - introduced. They generated a link to me and gave a warning that to participate, you need to bring at least two friends to this link. Remembering the story about the creator of chess, where he asked to put twice as many grains on each cell, I roughly presented a picture of a webinar. 5 minutes before the start, an invitation to the mail arrived. People connected simply unreal crowds! In general, a site went to 50,000 users from across the country about 15 minutes after the start. All this time the video did not even turn on, only general text chat worked.

End of excursion

Without further ado, we decided to take this model and as a friendly team created the same functionality.
1. We set the testing date for October 21, 20:00
2. Added honesty - they wrote that they had started as part of the platform testing
3. They added a sexual background. On the first page they mentioned the possibility of dating, on the second, with a personal link, they indicated that they should be distributed to friends of the opposite sex.
4. Left the heading from “Teledoktor” (target project) and when you click on the label, you can go to the main site.
The assembled base of electronic mailboxes is of particular value. Since these are people who have a camera and a microphone, nothing physically interferes with taking the advice of a doctor, which means that by the time the number of clinics in the system exceeds the first hundred, sending invitations to the service to these mail addresses should become the most effective.

That's how we came up with cunning and clear. It remains only to press the button and enjoy.
Clicked. A little less than a day passed, and the progression is definitely arithmetic. About 100 people were registered in the service, and 85% are girls. I did not expect this in any way, since the gender subtext was aimed primarily at men. Such reproduction is more reminiscent not of viruses, but of mammoths during an approaching glacier.
I will not hide that I expect from Habra a certain influx of users, but I perfectly understand that there will not be tens of thousands. If virality was implemented efficiently, the effect would be instant.
More interested in the debriefing, recommendations of specialists, perhaps suggestions for the next campaign.

You can look at the miracle of viral DNA sequencing here.

So what is virality - the predicted result of quality work, or a matter of chance?
Thank you for attention!