Neoco

I think the word ‘viral’ is used to liberally. Yes the RATM campaign is viral. However, the video produced above has 18 hits and is not viral. Not yet anyway. So the real question is – when is it okay to call a video ‘viral’? The answer is – not until it has received that status and you are seeing it sent back to you by everyone you know.

Thanks for your comment. In fairness, the video has 18 views in 40mins of being live – not awful.

I understand what you are saying but I think your reference to success is not needed. If you make a voucher that rewards friend-get-friend activity then you’ve done a referral campaign. If you only ever reach two people it’s a pretty awful campaign but importantly it’s still a pretty awful referral campaign. So this video and the many like it are all viral videos in the sense they are created for viral activity – though Pareto law tells us that 20% of them will generate 80% of the total traffic. The RATM bandwagon is too far gone for any current vids to generate 100,000 views – especially when the campaign only has 8x that subscribed – but it’s good fun to watch and even more fun to get involved and co-create something. That was the true message behind this post.

I def agree with your thought about it being great fun to participate in the fun by co-creating – so don’t get me wrong.

I was just taking this from another tangent and highlighting that there are other things to consider, including but not limited to – considering the client’s point of view, considering the nature of virals and whether experiments like this damage the trust in the strategy and so on.

I understand the 20/80 rule but the purpose of a true viral campaign is to break that rule. Yes this video shouldn’t generate 100000 views – specially not today (The Youtube channel shows that it was up uploaded 3 hours ago btw) but if it a good use of the Russell Athletic brand? Remixing two virals – is great but it must have a benefit to the brand and the cause – on both sides.

Apologies if I have offended.