Unleashing Your Own Ideavirus

Get it free.

“The idea is to create an environment where consumers will market to each other.” If, as the cluetrain manifesto claims, markets are conversations, this idea should work. An ideavirus (an ambitious word with awful connotation) is basically an idea or product or service that takes hold in a major way of a specific population. Ideaviruses can be intentional or unintentional, but clearly author Seth Godin believes intentional ideaviruses are superior. Unleashing The Ideavirus serves as a how-to guide to make your idea figuratively explode.

Getting your idea to explode involves many variables, but the most important are as follows:

CREATE AN IDEA THAT FACILITATES COMMUNICATION BETWEEN CONSUMERS. Hotmail is one of the most successful and literal examples of this, embedding an advertisement for free e-mail at the footer of every message you send someone. Polaroid is another example, as is anything that you can say, “hey- look at this, this is cool” to someone else, and they’ll want to try it.

TARGET SPECIFIC AUDIENCES. You’d think companies would have jumped on this a long time ago, but advertising continues to be a massive waste of money because the message is incoherent. Specific “hives” like specific things. Don’t market tech products to the technologically-impaired, for example. Market to the nerds.

WORK FAST. In today’s go!go!go! society, products quickly die (especially those in the technological realm). Money is to be made at the launch of an idea, because nerds who have money to spend tend to want the newest thing. You also want to be the innovator,

EMPLOY INFLUENTIAL MERCENARIES. Known as “sneezers,” and purloined from Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point, these people have the power to move products simply by suggestion. Perhaps we can call them “guerilla advertisers.”

MILK YOUR IDEA WHILE YOU CAN; LET IT DIE WHEN IT GETS SICK. Don’t “jump the shark.”

MAKE IT EASY TO SPREAD THE VIRUS. Put a little “e-mail to a friend” button somewhere. Similarly, MAKE IT CHEAP (OR FREE), at least at first. Building a buzz now can lead to profits later.

Simple, eh?