This presentation is based off my thesis on "How and Why Products go Viral." Learn how to hack the marketing game and create a viral product. Based off books such as The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell, Contagious by Jonah Berger, and Ideavirus by Seth Goden.

1. HOW TO
WIN THE
VIRAL
MARKETING
GAME

2. STRATEGY GUIDE
• Objectives- why should you care about viral marketing
• The Rules- defining virality
• Key Players- authors and experts on virality
• High Scores- examples of viral success
• Scoring- how to break down metrics/causes of viral
products
• Why the Game Works-psychology behind marketing
• Cheat Codes- how to implement strategies right now

3. OBJECTIVES
• Reach a wide audience, as quickly and easily as possible
• Have a lot of fun, make money, and provide value to
millions of customers or users

4. THE RULES
• Virus: A virus invades living cells and uses their chemical
machinery to keep itself alive and to replicate itself. It may
reproduce with fidelity or with mutations.
• Ideavirus as defined by Seth Goden: A big idea that runs
amok across the target audience. This propagates
through a section of the population, teaching and
changing and influencing everyone it touches.

5. KEY PLAYERS
• Tipping Point by Malcom Gladwell
• Connectors: people who are involved in many different groups, cross-
fertilize ideas
• Mavens-people who desire to help other consumers make informed
decisions
• Salesmen- unbelievably eloquent people who can persuade anyone
• IdeaVirus by Seth Goden: Sneezers
• Promiscuous Sneezers: have large influence and will take on many
ideas for money to spread to a wide audience
• Powerful Sneezers: cannot be bought off but control a wide audience
of selective users

6. HIGH SCORES
• 1996 Hotmail, used invitations at the bottom of each
email, trusted friends spread this “Ideavirus” and
infected their peers
• 1994 Hush Puppies- hipsters in New york
• Paul Revere v. William Dawes
• Please Don’t Tell

7. SCORING
• Social Currency-we share things make us look good.
• Will it Blend
• Triggers- tip of the tongue.
• “Friday” by Rebecca Black
• Emotion-when we care, we share. Create high arousal
emotional responses.
• Dove Real Beauty, Thank you Mom
• Public- build to show, built to grow
• Glowing Apple screen

8. SCORING (CONT.)
• Practical Value- news people can use
• OK Cupid Blog, Shopify Blog
• Stories-people are inherent storytellers
• Red Bull Felix Baumgartner’s free fall from space
• Stickiness – keep coming back for more
• Sesame Street
• Smoothness-ease of the end user to spread the
information
• Uber referral codes, share buttons
• Insider Club- feeling elite or special
• Ello

9. SAMPLE GAME:
NEOPETS & REDDIT

10. NEOPETS
• Insider club
• Virtual world
• Anonymity
• Customization
• Currency
• Neopoints
• Stickiness
• 1997 600K views per day
• 117 minutes per week
• 2005: 25 million unique
users

11. REDDIT
• Insiders club
• AMA
• Create any group
• Currency
• Karma Points
• Stickiness
• 174M monthly users
• Average user spend 16
minutes per page

12. SAME SAME
• Insider Club
• Interact with new people when you normally can’t, provide practical
value
• Talk to celebrities on Reddit or Neopet billionaires
• One Plus One
• Inbox, by Gmail
• Dribbble
• The Facebook
• Currency
• Work towards goal and create artificial control when you can’t in real
life
• Starbucks reward cards- drink your way to a Gold Card
• Leader boards
• FourSquare Badges- Mayors
• Stickiness
• Smoothness, customization

13. WHY THE GAME WORKS
• Pavlov’s experiments
• Ring a bell (Conditioned Stimulus)
• Feed dog a treat (Unconditioned Stimulus)
• Dog salivates (Uncontrolled Response)
• Salivating when bell rings w/o treat-> conditioned response
• Coke
• Coke (Conditioned Stimulus)
• Polar Bear (Unconditioned Stimulus)
• Smile because cute (Uncontrolled Response)
• Smiling when see Coke w/o bear-> conditioned response

14. CHEAT CODES
1. Start Small:
• Find a community hungry for your product and gain influence
2. Make your product easy to share
• Use Bread and Butter theory
• Group buy-in, testimonials, “share” buttons
3. Condition users to love & share your product
• Use Pavlov’s theory to condition users to feel happy when they hear/see
your product
4. Provide value or incentivize the user
• Social currency, practical value, monetary incentive
• Referral codes, discounts, solving pain points
5. Work with & learn from influencers
• Contact via Twitter, LinkedIn, cold email
6. Be weird
• Have a strong brand personality, make it memorable with a key trigger
• Test in focus groups what makes people have strong arousal emotions

15. GO PLAY!