Harry Taylor

How To Make A Successful Viral Advertisement

When it comes down to the creation of a viral advertisement, the directors follow grounded principles; these may be worded differently to different directors but the foundation of it all is the same. I’ve been researching these, so I’ll just go through a few basics.

Allow the viewers to feel – For whatever feel you’re going for, whether it’s: comedy, drama, entertainment, etc. you should try and grasp the emotion as much as possible and build it into the ad.

Ideal length – 15-30 seconds is an ideal length for a viral ad, unless it’s promising with a guarantee of an exciting or memorable duration, it’s best not to stray too far from this time boundary. The fact is that most web surfers are extremely impatient, with an average of a 15 seconds attention span.

Use popular online resources - Unless you use a popular and regularly visited site to host your content, chances are it’s not going to be seen. Cutting the website a share of profits may be the best way to do so, or even use free sites (which most do), by posting your video on “reddit.com” or uploading it onto “youtube.com”.

Thumbnails – maybe it doesn’t sound so important, but your video needs to stand out, show you have an interesting video by using an interesting thumbnail.

Don’t be too obvious – facts are that normal ads are boring and often avoided, so unless it is truly amazing while still an obvious advert, go with something a little more unorthodox.

Allow it to spread – A viral ad is practically a marketing virus, and it needs to be able to fluently spread. So in order to create an epidemic of a video you must ensure there are no restrictions or surveys, because the majority of people will not bother (as I said earlier, the average web surfer has a 15 second attention span).

Keep a sequel in mind – if your ad was successful, then chances are people will want to see more, so a sequel or even a series of videos may be a good way to make you internet famous.

The list carries on, and I have barely scraped the surface, but hopefully I have shared some important basics.

Resources:

http://edition.cnn.com/2008/BUSINESS/05/30/jwt.viralicious/index.html

http://www.baekdal.com/media/viral-marketing-tricks

http://techcrunch.com/2007/11/22/the-secret-strategies-behind-many-viral-videos/

http://creativestudiosng.com/blog/2011/04/04/6-steps-to-build-a-successful-viral-marketing-campaign/