This is one in a series of posts describing some the ingredients that cause media to go viral. I am presenting a variety of examples, but I am most interested in how local businesses can create viral media for marketing purposes. As you read this, think about ways you can leverage these ingredients to tell your story.

I am using “pass-it-on” to describe what happens when we find a message powerful or heartwarming and want to share it with our friends. A classic example of this effect was a quote attributed to Kurt Vonnegut that got forwarded millions of times by email in 1998:

Ladies and gentlemen of the class of ’98: Wear sunscreen. If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it. The long-term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience. I will dispense this advice now.
Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth. Oh, never mind. You will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they’ve faded…more

It turned out that the text was actually based on a column by a Chicago Tribune writer and not Kurt Vonnegut, but the words went on to be the basis of a popular song and have been quoted many times since. I remember when I received it as an email, because it was forwarded to me several times in the course of a few short days. It is a well-written speech with a good message that people wanted to share.

Another great example is this video by Dove exposing the artificial representation of beauty in popular media. When it came out, I wanted my children to watch it so they could understand how much of what they see is engineered and not natural. Many millions of people felt the same way. The message creates a positive association with Dove’s brand, and is a direct affront to more style-focused health and beauty products.

These examples involve big companies or famous people, but the pass-it-on effect works very well for small organizations and companies too. A recent blog post by a Colorado writer celebrated the first birthday of a McDonald’s Happy Meal that had been sitting open on the shelf for the past year. Her post was written about on Consumerist.com, Fark, BoingBoing, the HuffingtonPost and many other blogs and news sites. The publicity drove over 75 thousand people to her site, as well as all the exposure she received on other sites. Given that her site is focused on selling her books about children’s nutrition, that’s a lot of qualified leads.

Sometimes the pass-it-on effect is made explicit, as when the Dictionary.com page defining the word “cult” was posted on the link sharing site Digg.com. The link was posted with the title: Digg this if you are sick of $cientologists burying articles – and is the 5th most dugg article on Digg and has been commented on over one thousand times. Another explicit example happened this January, when women began posting their bra color on Facebook. Like many, I was stumped by the status updates: “black”, “beige”, “blue”, etc. The original source of the phenomenon is not known, but one story that got passed on was that it was to raise awareness for breast cancer. Whether or not this was the original cause, the Susan G. Komen Foundation was shocked to find their Facebook following go from 135 on the morning of January 8th to over 135,000 by the end of the day. They insist they didn’t have anything to do with the campaign, but they were a significant beneficiary.

I’ll end with the bizarre story of the inmates of the Cebu Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Center in the Philippines. Byron Garcia, the manager of the jail, organized and choreographed the prisoners in to doing a performance of Michael Jackson’s Thriller. This is just one of many things he’s done along these lines, but the video of this particular event has had over 40 million views on YouTube. In his words, “Rehabilitation has to be anchored on bringing out the best in men instead of the worst in men.” Pass it on.

Please comment if you know of other good examples. For other posts in this series, click here.