There’s no doubt that viral videos are every marketer’s dream, but viral can’t be made… or can it?
If there’s anything I’ve learned growing up online since the early 90′s it is that the Internet is a monster eating its own tail. We come to expect publishing something for everyone to see, but nobody sees it. And then we put something stupid online, and it soars to millions of hits.
In recent years companies have attempted to jump in on this, by using several of what a lot of us Gen Y Internet addicts call “viral cues”. It’s not something talked about all across the Internet, it actually usually stems out of chat room, message board and WoW chat boredom at 2 AM.
The problem with the attempt to go viral is that companies use these cues to try and trigger viral instincts. Some of these include but are not limited to: ninjas, wizards, vikings, pirates, awkward situations, cam girls, bizarre celebrity encounters and the ever facepalm worthy retroism. And spawning directly out of retroism right now is the fad that is 8-bit viral.
So, imagine having a huge target audience in the 80′s. Nintendo was out, Atari was still cool, and pixilated games were everywhere from arcades to living rooms. And what goes great with videogames? Junk food. So it’s no surprise that companies most embracing the retroism viral attempts are snack companies. (The name 8-bit viral stems from the use of Nintendo style graphics, which were at the time 8-bit pixels.)
Somewhere in media land people assume that 8-bit+ commercial=win. However, it’s one of the most obvious plays out there, from Dr. Pepper trying to cash in on the Konami Code to the new Cheetos viral attempt called “Legend of the Cheetocorn”. Which, plays out as a Nintendo style 8 bit side scrolling flash videogames where you ride a unicorn, defeat bizarre monsters, fart and eat Cheetos.
Now, this is great and all, it’s a fun office time killer, but will it be viral? The key flaws here, as what I’ve discussed with a few friends of mine are that it is both a meme over stimulant, in which it tries to capitalize on a few memes at once, and it’s trying to be 8-bit viral at the same time. The conjunction of the two in such a standard and seamless fashion is what makes the difference between viral and non-viral.
Because the key is that if you want things to be a viral success, you need things mashed together that only a 14 year old boy could imagine being funny. This is the nature of viral; it is not an act of advertising, but an act of unexpected creation.
