The NextStage CRO explains why viral marketing is pyramidal in structure.

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So I got this joke...
I received a link from a trusted associate, someone I've met in person. I opened the link three or four times before I started calling over other people in our office, then sent it out on my joke list, then started receiving emails from people I'd sent the link to telling me how blown away they were. In each case the responses to the clip hovered around Uniqueness, Palpable Reward and Entertainment.

And this is where utility and social networks come in big time: I know many of the people on my joke lists pass the jokes on to someone else. Cultural anthropologists call this "gifting." Gifting has different aspects in different cultures. In western culture gifting's meaning is highly utilitarian and extremely simple: "my value to you increases because I gave you something you can use and/or will value and don't require its return. Keep me around because I may do this again."

Ah, the social network is formed, a viral campaign succeeds.

Enter Chris Bliss
I wrote earlier in this article that NextStage is completing some research on viral marketing and WOM, and I realized a trusted associate had sent me a very real demonstration of what our research was describing. I contacted Chris Bliss, the fellow in the link that I mentioned at the start of this column and described my interest briefly.

Bliss shared that the clip had originally been posted at the end of January 2006. I contacted him on March 16, 2006.

He'd already had well over a million hits and -- are you ready for this? -- they were all organic!

No listings, no search engine work, no effort on his part whatsoever. It started with, "some unknown visitor to my site, and took off with traffic continuing to build." Bliss then added that, "the funny thing is, I'd actually talked to a friend of mine last year about trying to float this clip out on to the web, maybe as an email attachment of a lo-rez QT file, but never got around to it. Then, boom, it happens on its own. About three weeks ago, my friend even got it, emailing me to tell me with the words "holy crap!!!" in the subject line. So, it viral marketed itself-- and it's been unbelievable."

What it all means...
Let's get back to Meskauskas' four points: entertainment, utility, palpable reward and uniqueness. These are critical and must occur in psychological equal measure.

"Psychological equal measure?" Yes.

The Chris Bliss clip has utilitarian value because my social value (trust, fair-exchange) increases when I pass it on to you (even though how you'd use the clip in business is a bit beyond me right now... except to get people into your office for no reason and to kill time... again, utility via increasing social value). Add in trust between sender and receiver, and allow for some fair-exchange between the two, and we see that viral marketing is like catching a cold: just be in the same room and you're bound to get it.

Viral marketing isn't about products or value in the traditional sense; it's about trust and fair-exchange and is pyramidal in structure. Here is a graphic representation of the pyramid:

The base is Meskauskas' four elements of entertainment, utility, palpable reward and uniqueness. The top of the pyramid is success. The more you fill that pyramid with trust and fair-exchange, the greater your chances are for a successful campaign.

The message to companies going down this road is a simple one: make the social value of the exchange more important than what's being exchanged and your campaign will take off every time.

Or you can hire Chris Bliss and he'll do it all for you.

I'll go into the other side of viral marketing -- why some campaigns will never work -- in my next column.