UNLEASHING THE IDEA VIRUS

SETH GODIN

Age of Ideas

• Farms, Factories & Idea Merchants

• The holy grail for anyone trafficking ideas is this: To unleash an ideavirus.

Idea virus – Idea that moves, grows & infects

• idea manifesto

• create value by changing the way people think, talk or act…

Age of Ideas

• Marketing Barriers

• Hotmail Story

• Problems with WoM

• Ideas run amuck

Idea Velocity

Age of Ideas

• Netscape,VW Beetle

• Currency of the future

• Interruption Marketing Slaves

Why an Ideavirus is so important?

• Zipf’s Law• People are more connected than ever• The Traffic Imperative• We used to make food & stuff. But we make

Ideas now• We’ve got more nerds than ever• Huge profits from creating and owning such

virus• Tremendous hunger for something new• End of Zero sum game

Five Things Idea viruses Have In Common

• The most successful ideaviruses sometimes appear to be accidents

• An ideavirus adores a vacuum• Once an ideavirus spreads, it follows a lifecycle• Ideaviruses are more than just essays and

books, and are winning because of intelligent seeding by their creators.

• Viral marketing is a special case of an ideavirus

SNEEZERS

• Promiscuous sneezers– Mercata, All advantage and Amazon

• Powerful sneezers– The Times

The art of the promiscuous

• Make big promises

• Show them how to make it up in volume

• Describe an attainable path

• When someone succeeds, tell the rest of them

• Give the successful ones a way to show the non-sneezers it worked

• Have a Mary Kay convention

Don’ts – Promiscuous sneezers

• Changing the rules in the middle

• Viewing the relationship as an expense

Idea virus and the vacuum

• Hard to keep two conflicting ideaviruses at the same time

• Vacuum doesn’t last for long – Aeron chairs

• Ignore the life cycle and feed it – Tom Peters

• Viral marketing and idea virus

Three key levers

• How big do you launch?

• How smooth is it?

• How can you turn trial into persistence?

Five ways to unleash an idea virus

• Go full viral– Hot mail– Blue mountain arts– Ofoto

• Pay off the promiscuous– Referrals.com

• Make it smooth for the powerful– Inside.com

Five ways to unleash an idea virus (contd)

• Digitally augment word of mouth– extremely persistent– much greater velocity– May have more credibility

• Altruism– Les Nomades

Multiply these five factors

• [reputation benefit to powerful sneezer of recommending virus]

• [selfish benefit to promiscuous sneezer of recommending virus]

• [smoothness of sharing the virus with a friend]• [power of the amplifier used to spread positive

word of mouth]• [frequency of interactions among hive members]

Divided by the sum of these two factors:

• [number of times you need to expose someone in this hive in order for the virus to catch]

• [number of different sneezers who have to recommend a virus to a given individual for it to ignite]

And then multiply that by the product of these four factors:

• [percentage of infected hive members likely to sneeze]

• [number of people the infected sneezer is likely to contact]

• [persistence of the virus (how long does a sneezer sneeze?)]

• [number of people infected /(divided by) number of people in the hive]

The Eight Variables

1. Sneezers2. Hive3. Velocity4. Vector5. Medium6. Smoothness7. Persistence8. Amplifier

• Sneezers– Powerful– Promiscuous

• Hive– choose your hive first, then build the idea.– attack small but intimate hives.

• Velocity– Digitally augmented word of mouth.

• Vector– Who it starts with.– Who it resonates with

– What’s easy.• Medium

– PayPal.com

• Smoothness– Apple i-phone

• Persistence– new technology that won’t be around tomorrow

• Amplifier– allows the positive word of mouth to be amplified – the negative to be damped– Planetfeedback.com

Case Studies & Riffs

• The Vindigo Case Study

Saving The World With An Ideavirus

• Toyota Prius…..

• Failed

» Name» Smoothness» The Car itself

Steps to turn manifesto into an Ideavirus:

• Important and cool and neat and useful and new, compelling, clear and exciting words.

• Launch to largest audience of sneezers

• Run ads

• Maintain the virus- distributing freebies.

Moving Private To Public

• American Airlines - frequent flyer miles.

• Hakuhodo - New Year’s cards.

The Money Paradox

• The sooner you ask for money, the less you’ll make.

• Steps for success– Fill the vacuum– Achieve lock-in– Extract revenue

• Ex : E-Fax, Watts Wacker - The 500 Year Delta

Is That Your Final Answer?

• What should the sneezer say?

• “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?”

• Web

• The first touch.

• Bestseller Lists.

• George Lucas In Love.

• Judging a book by its cover– Turn of the Century

• Yahoo (Lycos, AltaVista, InfoSeek and Architext).

Risky???????

No, You Go First!

• Make it clear to that consumer that your idea has arrived.

Try it, Like it ,Buy it…

Crossing the Chasm

• Pre-chasm people want something cool. Post-chasm people want something that works.

The Myth Of The Tipping Point

• Somehow a magic moment appears when the entire population goes from blissful unawareness of your offering to total and complete infatuation.

• Example:

The Compounding Effect

• Increasing returns from an ideavirus

• Creating the self-fulfilling prophecy that leads to success

• Example: Publishing houses

Permission: The Missing Ingredient

• Built amplification but forgot to get permission to follow up

• The challenge of the idea merchant is to turn the virus into an asset. And you turn the virus into an asset when you ask the user for permission to follow up directly!

Virus And Permission: Team Up

1. Invent a virus worthy idea.

2. Make it smooth and persistent.

3. Incent powerful sneezers.

4. Get their permission to follow up

• Galliano hires Dorf

• Harvey Wallbanger

• Every single win on the consumer side of the Internet: ideavirus.

Step By Step, Ideavirus Tactics

Make it virus worthy Identify the hive Expose the idea Figure out what you want the sneezers to say Give the sneezers the tools they need to spread the virus Once the consumer has volunteered his attention, get

permission Amaze your audience so that they will reinforce the virus

and keep it growing Admit that few viruses last forever. Embrace the lifecycle

of the virus