After reading this article with examples of the movie industry’s attempt at viral marketing, one must wonder: “How to?”  Some campaigns deemed successful are ones with clear-cut plans.  The other half seemed interesting on paper, but crashed and burned when applied.

How then do you attempt a viral campaign with chance of success?  Is there a formula to follow?  Dan Goodswen proves that there is definitely precedent to follow.  For the film industry specifically, there are aspects of certain campaigns that seem successful.  For films, it seems that if the viewer is questioning if something is true or not “the buzz” increases.  Call us conspiracy theorists, but examples like Blair Witch Project, Fight Club, and the Dark Knight fit the mold. Toeing the line with the ‘is it real?’ question creates hype.  Thinking outside the box is not necessarily better.  The Da Vinci Code tried games and puzzles on the internet, a campaign deemed too ambitious to be successful.

Now, viral videos are less underground.  We wake up to infectious and creative videos featured on the Today Show, videos are forwarded to our inboxes, and websites like Digg and Stumbleupon tell us what people everywhere are looking at.  What is so great, is that if your campaign is good, there are people tweeting until they are blue in the face fingers, and people will hear about it.

It is easy to connect youtube videos with viral campaigns but what else is out there?  Hershey’s used sponsored house parties, luring nearly 150,000 guests.  HBO series True Blood created fake beverage ads and a vampire-human dating site, causing viewership to grow 66% over the course of the first season. (Source:  http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/135/spread-the-word.html)

These numbers are impressive, no doubt.  Back to deciphering a formula, the answer for one constant success story is still at large.  The only consistency appears to be that any successful viral marketing campaign needs to ‘go big or go home’ in this pass/fail grading system.