Sth about Viral Stuff

Due to the growing number of social networking websites and increasing use of video sharing, viral videos have gained a rapid popularity. According to Purcell (2010), 69 percent of adult Internet users have watched or downloaded videos via the Internet and among those who watch videos online, the percentage of people who share videos have jumped to 61 percent in June 2009 from 33 percent in December 2006. The increasing popularity of video sharing has attracted attention of ad agencies; they started to add viral videos to their marketing strategies.

Viral video is within the field of viral advertising, which delivers persuasive messages with an aim of motivating the spread of messages via peer-to-peer communication. Many research on viral ads attempt to find the factors that make a viral campaign successful and make people want to forward the viral message. Millward Brown has unveiled four factors acounting for the success of viral ads-the awareness index, buzz, celebrity and distinctiveness and demonstrated the characteristics that made people would like to talk about an ad and forward the "virus" to their friends included Laugh out loud funny, Edgy, Gripping and Sexy, which are short as LEGS. I humbly think that making it go viral should always be a topic of new marketing strategies.