How do you measure virality in a video?

The whole idea of a storage company making a video that reaches "viral status" is very interesting to me since I like making videos and I work for a storage company.  There are several problems with making a viral storage video including the relative size of the storage community, which is not large enough to generate large numbers of viewers and then there is the matter that competitors tend to not promote each others work very much, which creates a dampening effect on the whole word of mouth thing that I have associated with viral media.

So, I get the idea of trying to promote a video, because you need a big lift beyond the industry to do it and you need to take advantage of the dynamics of the online video world.

If you follow this link and read it,  you'll get an idea of how corporation can make viral videos. But not all viral videos are corporate - there are some that make it on creativity, execution and timing.  Although its against very steep odds, a non-corporate video video can succeed if its interesting and compelling enough for people to want to share it with others.  Being outrageous helps a lot.  The question remains - if most viral videos result from corporate marketing programs, what does that say about the definition of viral - is it only the most numbers of viewers, or is it something else?

As far as I can tell, the most "viral" video produced in the storage industry was probably the Hitler social media video, which quietly made the rounds last summer and now has over 18,000 views.  To me, this seems like the right amount of views to qualify for virality in the storage industry.  I'm fairly certain that no company  was promoting it with a marketing campaign - although there were many industry employees that passed the link through email. As far as I know, the producer of the video is a mystery (at least to me) and I don't think it was done to achieve any business goal. 

I've made a few videos that had nothing to do with storage that were simply attempts at being funny.  They were fairly well received, but were not promoted by marketing and have not generated nearly the same number of views as the "corporate viral" videos or the Hitler video have. Admittedly, I get a little jealous when I see somebody else's corporate production reaching getting a lot of hits, but I know what to expect without a campaign.

But it's also giving me the opportunity to re-post what I think was my best and funniest video - a video cartoon that I made the day that Oracle announced that it was going to acquire Sun. One question, - neglecting the numbers and the promotion necessary to generate "viral status", does this video have viral qualities? Why or why not?

Comments

[josephmartins]

Marc, I think you're right that virality must be considered in context. No doubt there are degrees of virality. Something can be viral within a particular community without necessarily becoming mainstream viral.

While there does not appear to be a universal formula for success, the "holy crap you have to see this" factor seems to play an important role.

[marc farley]

Thanks Joseph, If only there was a way to measure enthusiasm and excitement! Maybe Woody Allen had something to do that in one of his movies.

[Steve]

Hey Mark,

I think the issues is that corporations are now seeing video as a way to get reach. It is a fad (not to be confused with FUD) and like all fad's it will follow the school of fish mentality. Everyone will do it, some will cross a line and it will ebb and flow back to some middle ground that is useful and works for the masses. That will take 18 months.

The issue is, which you pointed out, there aren't that many high school or college kids sitting in the data room surfing YouTube for some guy in a data center getting hit in the you know what with a rake (hey,that gives me an idea). And conversely what is funny to us - because of experience - is not funny to them so they don't share it. This is why vendors feel the need to take the dollars they have spent on production to make the video 'out there'.

As far as the Oracle/Sun thing goes (or for that matter most of your videos) they all have the creativity of becoming viral. It was funny, well thought out, original, creative and the right length.The issue with the EMC / Hitler video is that it that video actually offended a lot of EMC folks (as some have Jewish backgrounds) and was classless. I know a lot of us take the SNL approach to video - pirate stuff and put in industry references to make it funny - I do this because I am no where near as creative as you can be. That said, people should think about the affect of what they pirate.

Anyway Mark, this is a great topic and as I said, I am sure the discussions are just starting as video marketing is just getting 'viral'. And by the way, I don't care if we compete, I'll always promote your stuff - it just plane makes me laugh out loud, and we need that in our silly business.

[marc farley]

Thanks for commenting Steve. You know the Hitler Downfall video parodies are an interesting and somewhat disturbing phenomenon. According to this Wikipedia article there were over a thousand of them. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downfall_%28film%29

The section below is quoted from the wikipedia article:

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"By 2010, there were thousands of such parodies, including one in which a self-aware Hitler is incensed that people keep making Downfall parodies.

The film's director, Oliver Hirschbiegel, spoke positively about these parodies in a 2010 interview with New York magazine, saying that many of them were funny and they were a fitting extension of the film's purpose: "The point of the film was to kick these terrible people off the throne that made them demons, making them real and their actions into reality. I think it's only fair if now it's taken as part of our history, and used for whatever purposes people like." Nevertheless, Constantin Films has taken an "ambivalent" view of the parodies, and has asked video sites to remove many of them. On April 21, 2010, the producers initiated a massive removal of parody videos on YouTube. However, there has been a resurgence of the videos on the site since the mass removal.

As explained by Corynne McSherry, an attorney specializing in intellectual property and free speech issues for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, "All the Downfall parody videos that I've seen are very strong Fair Use cases and so they're not infringing, and they shouldn't be taken down."
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The fact that there were so many of these parodies and that they became an internet meme says something about Internet videos and virality, but its not at all clear to me what. One might think that the repetition of the meme would make them less interesting - if you've seen one, you get the idea. I don't think its simply a matter of the same joke with different punch lines. There is a reason why the same basic gag gets done over and over and over again and I am sure it has something to do with the fascination, confusion and pain that surrounds horrible acts.

This New York Times article (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/26/magazine/26wwln-medium-t.html?pagewanted=all) makes some interesting points and suggests at the end:(quoted below)
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"Isn’t that the outcome that Adolf Hitler, the historical figure, sought? Didn’t he see himself as the brute voice of the everyman unconscious?

How grim — how perplexing, how unsettling — that after more than 60 years of trying to cast and recast Hitler to make sense of him, we may have arrived at a version of Hitler that takes him exactly at his word."
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