Advance

THE LAST WORD ON ‘VIRAL’?

10/12 2009 // aaron

A very quick post to highlight Bud Cadell’s convincing deconstruction of the misuse of the word ‘viral’ in our industry.

As Bud argues extremely cogently, most people throw the term around without having the first idea of what they’re talking about. He writes:

‘Here’s what a viral video would actually be: I receive a link from a friend to watch a hilarious YouTube video of a cat walking on a birthday cake. I click said link. Some malicious code on the page copies itself to my computer. That code continues to replicate across my system files. To make the marketers happy, that video also commandeers my social network profiles and publishes the same link to the hilarious video of a cat walking on a birthday cake. The same code has also corrupted my browser, now any video I want to watch is replaced with the link to the hilarious video of a cat walking on a birthday cake.’

The rest of the post is given over to some very sensible points about creating spreadable media. Or, as Bud argues it should be called, media that is simply ‘popular’.

This resonates with me for the same reason that I feel my heart sink when people start throwing out words like monetizing, value, community or conversation. In the rush to keep their brands relevant (and their jobs viable) too many marketers are losing track of the basics: be good, be interesting. Seth Godin said it best back in 2003 – be remarkable.

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