I have to come clean. I’ve worked on campaigns for which the goal was, in part, to get a particular piece of creative to go (and I quote) “viral.” That is, we designed campaign elements to be intriguing and clever, a bit surprising and funny. I suppose that only a disinterested third party could truly determine if we actually created something of quality, but in each case we believed that what we made was actually good. In many of these campaigns, a large group of people agreed with us and passed it along.

But it’s increasingly clear that interactive marketers shouldn’t turn up their noses when a client wants a campaign to spread virally. For a long time, interactive strategists would get fairly upset at the prospect of having to make something go viral. They claimed viral was simply the effect that occurs only very infrequently and cannot be planned for. (more…)