"We Want a Viral Video"

Will one good video do the trick?

Organizations come to us all the time and say, "We want a viral video."

By viral, they mean a video that is passed from person to person, getting their message out to an audience they would otherwise never be able to reach.

Well, there are a few things we generally point out:
1) going viral usually results from a combination of timing, comedy, and pure luck
2) going viral may get a lot of views, but it may not necessarily result in dollars, action, or email addresses
3) going viral may not happen, no matter how compelling your message

At See3, we try to stress the importance of being consistent and building an audience over time. With the Sierra Club campaign we recently completed, the three campaign videos collectively received 119,000 views and helped surpass campaign benchmarks both in terms of petition signatures and house party hosts. These videos retained audience, deepened engagement, and enhanced the initiative.

It's with campaigns that your organization will have a better chance of reaching its goals. A campaign is an effort to reach a distinct group of people, over a clear period of time, with a discrete set of creative materials (a microsite and multiple videos, for example).

If you haven’t yet seen the Office Max back to school campaign, make sure to watch at least the first two videos. While each one may have reached an audience, it is through repetition that the message is much more effective.