My girlfriend recently got a job as a campus rep for the Pulse Smartpen from Livescribe. She has a tendency to promote the pen wherever she goes anyway, so the job is kinda a natural fit for her.

Anyway, when she got back from her training meeting she told me that the company had been trying to promote their product with some sort of viral video, but the ones she'd seen kinda lost their momentum after the first minute.

"I know that you used to do a lot of video stuff, maybe you could come up with something," she suggested.

"Well," I replied optimistically, "I've got a long, boring, day at work ahead of me. I'll have a script idea for you by tonight."

I was a bit wrong about that. By that evening I had three script ideas.

And the theory of How to Promote Your Product with Viral Video.

I had, of course, heard that some marketing people had been quite interested in the whole phenomenon of virality; and I was vaguely aware that there were people in the business world trying to make use of it, but I'd never really given it a whole lot of thought. Somehow, the idea that anyone would have the hubris to attempt to harness something as chaotic as virality to promote a product seemed rediculous. And intriguing.

Remove all of the marketing BS and ask yourself: What is a viral video? What quality does it have that makes it spread throughout the interwebs like a virus?

Pretty much only one thing: When people see it; their first thought is "I have got to show this to my brother" or mom, or friend or whatever. The only thing a video needs to potentially spread, is the ability to infuse in it's audience the desire to spread it.

I know, I know. It's rediculously simple, but bear with me, most things seem simple when you get right down to it. The primary thing that this principle gives you is the ability to test if your video is viral-able. The question: 'Do people who see this video seem to want to pass it on?' is one that can be tested in thought experiments or focus groups, if you've got the resources.

Another implication of this principle is that viral videos should, generally, not be commercials.

This is the part that's really really hard for marketing people to wrap their heads around. Their entire focus is on effectively communicating a single message. That may be true for traditional ads, which are placed where the eyes are, but it doesn't really follow for something which aims to attract eyes on it's own merits.

So the entertainment value of your potentially viral video is more important than the message.

To summarize:

-A Viral Video is one that people enjoy so much they want to share it

-Therefore, it should be entertaining above all else. Even if you have to skimp on the message.

Which brings me to my simplest video. It's just me, doing my best to tell the true story of something that happened at work about 5 years ago.

08.11.2009 4:42p
brought to you by Livescribe

My brother used to do something similar to this when he was in school. He and his friend would draw a picture, and each person had to add some minor chance that completly transformed the context. My second idea for a pencast, is to do a pencast illustrating how the game works.

I lack the artistic skills to pull this off, so for now, I'll just tell you.

Let's say Tyrell draws a picture of a happy little girl.

Ian then changes it so that she's crying because she dropped her ice cream.

Tyrell draws a man offering the crying girl another ice cream cone.

Ian changes the ice cream cone in the man's hand to a gun pointing at the little girl.

Tyrell draws a flag coming out of the end of the gun that says 'Marry Me.'

Ian writes: 'Age 11' and draws an arrow pointing to the girl.

Eventually, you can't really do too much with them and the game is over, or you completly ruin the page. But with the smartpen, you can see the story as it progresses, rather than just the one, uniformative snapshot that is the final product.

The reason both of these work as viral promoters of the product, is because not everyone knows the smartpet exists, or what it can do. By assuming knowledge on the part of my audience, I avoid advertising, and the features of the product are still fundamentally a part of the video.

With something that can produce it's own videos, this is probably low-hanging fruit, but I have gone the extra step of creating a game people can play using the product, and thus provided incentive for anyone who enjoys the pencasts to learn more about the pen.

I believe that these pencasts could go viral, and they do a decent job of promoting the product, but they probably won't propagate insanely well. Even with all my bases covered and brilliant production crew with massive resources there'd be no guarantee that our final product, however awesome, would actually go viral.

That's why the old economic model of advertising doesn't apply to viral videos. It doesn't make sense to pay an ad agency, however brilliant, to put together a viral video to promote your product be virality cannot be consistently predicted or guaranteed.

Instead, You should offer a bounty.

If a video with such and such criteria gets X number of hits / attracts major media attention by some time limit, then we'll pay the creator of that video some huge sum of money.

Potential problems I forsee: The video producer has to have good reason to believe the company will, in fact, pay up if his video goes viral. The company necessarilly loses some control over details reguarding how their product is promoted. Even though they can specifiy limitations on the kind of viral video they'll pay for, simply placing the bounty does run the risk of woefully inappropriate or even offensive material getting through.

Which brings me to my final idea. It actually is a commercial. (just because viral videos shouldn't be commercials; it doesn't mean they can't be.)

A woman is giving a list of instructions to a bored teenage boy who is doodling with a Pulse Smartpen and making conversational, generic grunts.

WOMAN

Are you getting all of this.

BOY

Yeah.

WOMAN

(Looking at the notebook)

No you're not! This is just a picture of an octopus

giving me the finger 8 times!

BOY

No, wait. Look.

He taps the pen on one of the Octopus' arms labeled 'PLANTS.' The pen starts replaying the recording of her instructions regarding watering plants.

BOY

See. Each time you made a new point, I drew a new

arm. If I need to hear the instructions again, I just

tap on the arm, and my smartpen replays what you

said. Besides. It's not an Octopus. It only has six arms.

WOMAN

So it's a Hextopus.

BOY

Nope. He's not holding a magic wand. I think it's a

Sextopus.

WOMAN rolls her eyes, while BOY writes Sextopus > Hextopus at the top of the page.

WOMAN

Whatever, just take care of the house while I'm gone.

She grabs her keys and bags.

BOY

(calling after her as she leaves)

You just be happy it's not the dreaded Rapetopus.

He adds to his earlier equation so that it reads: Rapetopus > Sextopus > Hextopus.

[Alternatively, the boy's final line could just be "Enjoy the retreat; watch out for Sextopi."]

Now I don't personally have any ties to Livescribe. They didn't ask me to write any scripts for viral videos or anything. It's something I did entirely on my own. (although I do hope they like my bounty for virals idea enough to appy it retroactively :):)

And I think people are savvy enough to realize that fake ads happen whether companies are offering bounties for viral videos or not. So I don't think the fear of potentially offensive messages doing more harm than good should dissuade companies from giving this a shot.

Now I just need to send a letter to the King of Livescribe and see if I an pursuade him to adopt Bucky the Livescribe Sextopus as their official mascot.

half-baked illustrations?

This Blog needs more snazz.

I'm thinking Illustrations.

The details need some hashing out. I'd prefer not to use any potentially copyrighted images without being sure that I'm not stepping on someone's toes, but I'm not particularly visually gifted. I can provide a few graphs and charts, perhaps, but most of my visions usually require hours and hours of photoshop (at least) to prepare. Also, It seems that I really really don't want to spend the necessary few hours messing around with it to get over the learning curve.

Hopefully this post will provide a bit of encouragement to quickly rectify the situation.

hmmmmm.

This was my least entertaining post yet. So here's a little preview of some of the half-baked ideas rollin' around in my head:

Designer dog breed: Cock-a-doodle-poo

Coed Boy/Girl scouts

New fasion accessory: Band-aids.

Invention: Mag-Lev model train. Also makes a great low-friction cat toy.

Tribal business: Re-vamping economics with human nature in mind and happiness as a primary goal.

Things I'd like to have an army of: Amorous Mormons.

Teacher's are responsible for assigning grades to their own students? Sounds like a conflict of interests to me.

Illustrations for this blog consist entirely of pictures of my cats wearing homemade costumes... Each expressionm more murderous than the last.

A proposal for a new branch of government composed entirely of conscripts. The Irregular Representatives. The Random Representatives. The Peoples Chamber. The Loser's Chamber.

Domesticate Hippopotomi: Put Door to door Security System salesmen out of business. Permanently.

Brand new Swear Word: Puppies!

Exec: Hey, I know you usually are a part of a team of five, but we fired two of your partners and the other two quit; so you're gonna have to manage on your own today... and for the indefinate future.

Worker: Aw Puppies!

Exec: Hey, hey! Keep the language down or we'll liquidate you too. With a giant blender!

Worker: Pup- I mean... Uh... Go fuck yourself?

Exec: That's better.

Wow, I really think I made a wrong turn somewhere back there.

Puppies!

The Corporate Evil Principle

Here's another semi-tongue-in-cheek idea from years ago that I used to offer to my co-workers in order to unhelpfully explain why they could never escape what was affectionately referred to as 'The Bullshit.'

I call it the Van Cleve's Corporate Evil Principle, on account of the importance of self-promotion when identifying a heretofore often observed --but rarely pendantically expounded-- basic principle of nature. Like Newton's theory of Gravity; Brownian Motion, or Clarke's law.

Van Cleve's Corporate Evil Principle runs along the same logic as the Peter Principle, in that it extrapolates the likely experience of a single individual outward to encompass the entire organization that employs that individual. The Peter Principle basically states that all corporations are run by incompetent boobs because the primary (and often the only) way that they reward good performance is through promotion, and these promotions are often to jobs that have completely different performance objectives than the one at which the promoted employee was accelling. The end result of this chain of promotions is that the once deserving employee is now in a job that he's not especially good at, but is unlikely to be fired from, and he got there by excelling at something that he is no longer allowed to do.

Van Cleve's Corporate Evil principle doesn't really care about peter. Peter, it can be argued, is too nice to ascend past his trifling lower to middle management post. The Corporate Evil principle is a lot more interested in employees who have what it takes to ascend all the way, or at least pretty much all the way, to the top.

Think about the qualities that are most likely to result in a promotion to upper-management. Qualities like the ability to pretend you like someone when you don't, attention to image over substance, willingness to scapegoat others to save yourself, and other forms of backstabbery are far more likely to win promotions than someone who is cautious, genuine, takes responsibility for their own failurues, and admits when someone else is a better choice for the job.

In other words: The personality qualities that we typically associate with Evil are far, far more likely to get you promoted than the personality qualities that we associate with good.

Over time, this advantage tends to result in more and more Evil peolple rising to the top. Add this to the fact that most people tend to wish to associate with people that they can relate to (people that are like themselves) and you must conclude that, over time, this process causes all corporations to become (on average) Evil. Insofar as the big decisions of business are being made by people who are more and more likely to be evil.

After about 50 years, when just about everyone who started the company --therefore not subject to this Evil-ify-ing process-- has retired from active management of the company, it may even be fari to refer to the company as 'Completely Evil.' Since pretty much all of the major decision makers in said company are themselves Evil people.

Of course, this wouldn't hold true if a company managed to find a way to disadvantage Evil people when deciding who should be promoted; but as of yet, I haven't thought of one.

Perhaps Good People are going to need some sort of Affirmative Action-type plan in the not too distant future.