Occasionally I get calls asking how to run a viral campaign, and I do my best to explain, not just how to do it, but the problems that can arise.

“Viral” itself just means that lots of people look at your advert, video, site, article or whatever, and are so taken by it they pass it on to others.   Many virals are on You Tube – a film clip which is something that might not be allowable on TV is put up and everyone sends the link to everyone else, and everyone has a good laugh.

But firms are finding that such ads often fail to get any sort of leap in sales – billions of people watch the ad, but nothing much happens.

Old Spice and Evian have both had huge hits with their viral ads (reaching over 100 million views) only to find that they then lose market share!  Quite how or why is unknown (at least to me) but it happens.

Hamilton House doesn’t do TV, but we produce a lot of written material, and that is just as capable of being forwarded as a link to a video.  The number of hits might have quite a few noughts deleted from the end of what you get on a video campaign, but if you get the right piece on the web, and the word starts to flow, then you can get a lot of hits, and some good sales too.

Virals, be they articles, or videos generally have these factors in common.

1. The content unusual, or hard to find

2. In video the situation is normally funny, and surprising, sometimes shocking.  In writing it can be the same, or it can be highly informative for the minority at whom it is targeted.

3. Overall the message makes an impact and makes people want to send it on.  This can be the same as people sharing a joke (the joke teller goes up in the estimation of the listeners for knowing and telling such a good joke) or it can be that the information really empowers the reader who wants to pass it on.

You can see that doing a serious viral is hard – not least because of point 3 – people have to want to pass it on.

For example, if you read a free article on the internet that told you how to increase your profits in your particular industry, would you pass it on to your competitors?  Probably not – that’s the problem.

Thus just knowing that text virals can work is one thing – but making all three parts of the viral message work is another.

I’ve been working on it in two ways.  One is with humorous adverts and blogs (you might have seen www.blog.toppled.info which is a site containing a few of the humorous ads Hamilton House has done – many of which have become viral, although in a small way).  The other involves working with emotions.

As an example of the emotion approach, I experimented on one of my football blog sites.  The site relates to Arsenal football club, and a moment in its history which is seen by many fans of rival clubs as being a perfect example of this club’s cheating behaviour.  My article says, actually it was the other way round – Arsenal was behaving perfectly, while everyone else was cheating.

That may seem highly esoteric, but the short piece I have written has been downloaded and copied among the supporters time and again, because these arguments are important to such supporters.  It has worked, and it helps sell copies of a novel I published last year.

Convoluted yes, but it proves the point – it is not just humour but also emotion that can drive virals.

If you want to see the article I have referred to here it is at http://www.blog.woolwicharsenal.co.uk/2010/02/02/the-fixed-promotion-the-corruption-and-the-match-fixing-how-the-football-league-does-business/ Remember it is written for an emotional and biased audience – but that’s the point!

If you want to know more, call me on 01536 399 013.

Tony Attwood