Viral Video - How To (#1)

The big question of the video marketing sphere (and one that I hear from most of my clients on a regular basis) is: “How do I create a viral video?“. More than four years into the YouTube era, and we’re seeing videos created with web cams, showing cats jogging on treadmills, a man that dances a quirky dance all over the word and a sexy girl singing about Obama, gathering tens of millions of views. What companies pay millions of dollars for, some people out there top, with just your basic equipment, and hardly any editing. Every business dreams about successfully capturing the masses’ attention with viral videos, using it’s own dancing man and a ridiculously simple production, with a budget to match.


{One of the most successful viral campaigns in recent years: "Where the hell is Matt?"}

Viral videos are top marketing devices, promoting websites, services, products or brand names. But how do go about creating them?
A lot of agencies promise their clients a successful viral video campaign. Well, the task is so challenging that it’s rare to see a successful paid viral video. Following a few basic rules could better the chances of a successful viral video campaign. A lot of thought and research in the pre-production stage, could result in a very simple and cost effective production and post production process.

This first post will discuss the basic elements of viral marketing. Next ones will discuss the actual designing of a viral video.
As research has shown, for people to spread an idea around (or a viral video in our case) they need to:
1. Understand the video. The story should either be simple, or easy to explain via video language.
2. Want to spread the video around. People will forward the video to their family and friends if they think that they might gain something from it. When video is involved, people usually gain enhancement of their prestige and social status. It might broaden their friends and family’s horizons in intellectual matters. It might make others laugh. It might give away discounts or free stuff. If considering a sub-conscious motivations – spreading a viral video around might show that they themselves are interested in intellectual matters of the day (that is why environmental videos receive a lot of viral pushing) or make a favorable connotation between them and good humor.
3. The effort of spreading the viral video is smaller than the benefit. Although spreading the word out now days involves a few clicks and a decision on who to send the email to, the competition is harsh. The supply of funny, interesting and free give away videos is enormous. Your video needs to stand out and the benefit to be great – more interesting, funnier and sexier than others.
In conclusion - viral videos take advantage of common motivations and behaviors. Clever viral video campaigns take advantage of common human motivations: The desire to be cool, greed, popularity, the desire to be loved and other basic social desires. The resulting urge to communicate and make a social impact produces billions of e-mail messages containing leisure messages (and lots of videos). Design a video marketing strategy that builds on simple messages, easy to spread and built on common motivations and behaviors of the intended target audiance, and you have a winner video.
Next stop: Designing the viral video.