Can Voting Go Viral?

by Bernard from Apathy is Boring — November 2, 2010

[Marburg virus by ACJ1 on Flickr]

People (especially those involved in marketing) have been using the word "viral" quite a bit these days. Mostly, they use it as a buzzword: viral campaigns, viral videos, etc.

Sometimes, viral marketing works. Old Spice's recent YouTube campaign is a good example. At the A is B office, we were making "now back to me" jokes for a while after that commercial came out.

However, most of these campaigns don't go viral. They fail because whatever they've created isn't fun to share. It's just another boring video on the internet.

Biological viruses are scary because they're both sneaky and contagious. They latch onto something humans (or other animals) already do and use that behaviour to spread. Nobody starts a campaign to give everyone the flu each winter - we unknowingly pass the virus on by living our daily lives.

The same is true of viral campaigns. People already share online videos or talk about the new iPhone because these things are interesting to us. A good viral campaign just harnesses things that are already interesting - for example, by creating videos of an iPhone being blended. That's the golden rule for viral campaigns: don't be boring.

The good news is that active citizenship isn't boring. Research shows that if I convince your roommate to vote, there's a good chance you will vote too. Voting infects you through all the conversations, interactions, and guilt trips that make up roommatehood (which is almost a real word, so cut me some slack). That means under the right circumstances, voting can go viral. At A is B, a big part of our job is figuring out how to create those circumstances.

blog comments powered by Disqus