It often sounds like a lot of hot air and hype. But when content is spread virally it can boost brand awareness, fill your database and turn people into internet superstars, sometimes overnight.

Viral marketing has the potential to reach more people than multimillion pound branding campaigns. It’s not easy to do though.

Being able to intentionally create content that people happily share with their friends and colleagues is a challenge, particularly if you’re a marketing agency.

Word-of-mouse marketing

Viral is the evolution of word-of-mouth for the digital age, bigger and better than before.

Whereas in simpler times you’d be happy if your customers told their friends and family about how helpful your customer service is, now you want them to share it with their entire online network.

The ability to easily share content on the web, with a lot of people in a short space of time, means messages can spread rapidly and exponentially. Word-of-mouth buzz, however, tends to fizzle out, going in one ear and out the other without leaving a lasting impression.

Creating a virus people want to spread

Viral content can take a range of forms: free eBooks, software, video clips, Flash games, images or text messages.

What they all have in common is that people think the benefit they’ll gain from sharing the content is greater than the effort required to pass it along.

So to create content with a likelihood of going viral, you need to offer humour, entertainment or information that’s so valuable people feel compelled to tell everyone how great it is.

Many software developers create demand for their products by giving away limited versions for free, whilst more authors are starting to give away free chapters and excerpts to generate buzz for their new books.

Unpleasant symptoms you’ll want to avoid

Whatever its format, if you’re intentionally creating content to spread virally then there are a number of unspoken rules to obey:

Don’t advertise – web users resent all attempts of blatantly being sold to. So keep logo shots to a minimum, and don’t even think about pushing your brand message. Viral is about offering valuable content in exchange for engaging people’s time, not trying to ambush their attention.

Be authentic – everyone knows that you can’t be cool if you’re trying to be, so leave the hip hop soundtrack for MTV. Even worse is to pretend a mock user generated video featuring your product is nothing to do with you. People hate to think they’ve been deceived or manipulated into watching a branding exercise. So be authentic, and when in doubt give full disclosure.

Treat it as an experiment – creating a viral message that spreads amongst hundreds, let alone millions, of people is difficult. Very difficult. So treat viral as an experiment, rather than pinning your hopes on it getting you onto the national news. If you hit the jackpot, allow yourselves to bask in your creative genius. But don’t tear your hair out if your cheeky video clip fails to get any votes. Learn from each experiment and adjust your formula for the next attempt.

Virals that infected millions

So let’s be clear: incubating a viral message potent enough to infect millions of monitors is very difficult to do.

However, if you’re able to create content people value so highly that they fall over themselves to email, blog and Facebook about it then it can potentially gain more exposure than any other strategy.

Here are a few exceptionally contagious cases of viral content:

Threshers 40% off voucher – this gift to suppliers ‘leaked’ onto the web just before Xmas two years ago. The offer to stock up on cheap booze spread like wildfire. 800,000 downloads later and Threshers rang in the New Year with a bumper 60% extra in their tills.

Cadburys’ drumming gorilla – part of £6.2 million campaign covering TV, print and billboards, the 90 second commercial found its way onto YouTube, receiving 500,000 views in the first week. The TV ad was only broadcast in the UK, but the clip spread onto other video sharing sites generating 6 million views and national news coverage throughout the globe. The idea of using a drumming gorilla to sell chocolate bars helped turn around the brand’s slide and pushed sales up nearly 10%.

Hotmail –when Hotmail was launched in 1996 the internet was still only crawling its way into people’s homes. Spotting an opportunity to let their users do the legwork, Hotmail’s founders added a small advert to the footer of every message inviting the reader to signup for their free service. Within a year Hotmail had 8.5 million registered users, earning a $400 million cheque from Microsoft in the process.

Nike’s Ronaldinho clip - this ‘shaky’ video of the Brazilian casually hitting the crossbar four times from outside the box provoked a flurry of debate on whether it was real or fake. 26 million views later and we’re still none the wiser. But the clip generated more internet buzz than you’d get from a conventional corporate vanity ad, and costing several million less to create as well.

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BDA (Buckingham Design Associates) blog - real people giving real opinions, and a complete lack of agency waffle. BDA deliver an exciting blend of design and creative marketing for the Oxford, Milton Keynes, Northampton and London region.