Viral is so 2007?

Who are we trying to kid - 'viral' can be a very powerful tool in a marketers armoury, but like all tools and weapons of war it needs to be deployed skilfully and in the right circumstances.

Unfortunately 'viral' seems to be acquiring a bit of a negative reputation at present and this is undoubtedly due to its over use in inappropriate situations - a case of 'viral' being hoisted by it's own petard

Moving away from the obvious success of viral in certain circumstance - we have also seen that it suffers from a lack of clarity in what is considered as viral (mainly from clients) but also, and more disturbing we see a lack of understanding from agencies on how to actually make successful viral campaigns.

To often virals are purely idea led in their creation - this can be fine, but over reliance on an idea centric campaign can firstly be hard to replicate time after time, but more significantly it also goes against all the principles of good marketing communications in the 21st century.

At my current agency we have had some incredible success stories for our clients from virals, delivering brand, acquisition, retention and data capture objectives. However, all of these success stories share two things in common, a understanding of the unique customer experience in each case and thus how the brand and creative idea can work together to make the campaign truly viral.

Secondly and more significantly, an appreciation that all other media channels need to be leverage to help initiate the viral take off (to use an over used maxim, its tipping point). All our viral campaigns are supported by online advertising, search, email and offline media and typically never fail to exceed their objectives; the power & importance of holistic /integrated thinking.

It is only through applying grown-up marketing communications theory to every stage of a viral campaign's development that you can hope to ensure success; and agencies that ignore these basic principles do so at their peril, and even worse at the possible cost of viral as viable weapon in our tactical armoury.