Is viral marketing dead?

Viral marketing: every creative weeps when client arrives and asks for ideas for a viral campaign, and here's why I think Viral very very rarely works for brands..

Too Rude
The vast majority of mainstream brands will never succeed with traditional* viral marketing because the content and approach needed for a viral campaign is in direct conflict with their image and objectives. Would Coke have distributed One Night in Paris? Would Ford have dared to distribute Star Wars Kid (Imagine being the digital creative selling that into a room of execs?)?

Million to One
Secondly, for every hugely successful viral there’s literally millions of dead ducks lining You Tube servers and inboxes everywhere.

ROI?
As a client the chances of marrying a compelling message, original content and then getting it to ‘go viral’ are so slim the investment can rarely be justified.

Near impossible to commercialise
The best virals are user generated, and that’s intrinsic to the genre. Numa Numa bought a cheap webcam taped it to his pc, did his thing and then uploaded it, no crew, no makeup and not even a Radio Shack logo in sight. Star Wars kid didn’t bother with Nike Dance Training or a special effects team and that’s exactly why it went huge.

Nearly..
When some genius discovered that dropping Mentos into a bottle of Coke resulted in something pretty amazing we had something very interesting on our hands. Coke initially went all corporate on it trying to distance themselves from the explosive fun, but Mentos went for the jugular and embraced the whole thing creating a video upload site. The result: Mentos got a huge amount of coverage and a hugely successful site. Coke on the other hand only got marginal success and only after doing a swift “Me Too” u turn in attitude

Who’s got the time?
We don’t have time for virals unless they truly are the best. We’re spending more of our time than ever online but we’re more task led: connecting with friends on Facebook or buying holidays or browsing the iTunes Store.

Wrong Medium
Email has become a spam infested business tool rather than a social one, people are using other tools for social activities and so the prospect of seeing an exploding whale in your business email account hold even less prospect then it did originally.

It’s just not interesting anymore
Virals were spawned from the idea that the internet was a dark place where you could find pictures and videos of anything if you tried hard enough. Not everyone could find them and when they were found they were likely sexual or offensive. They then got passed round like a dirty little secret. None of those factors exist anymore, everyone can find anything so it’s not exciting to be the one who forwards it on.


* I say traditional because in essence the whole web is viral, it spreads from one user to another. Facebook uptake is viral for instance. But marketing executives generally term viral marketing, email spread videos and associated campaigns.