Unleashing the Ideavirus

Unleashing the Ideavirus
59
 www.ideavirus.com
just a couple years ago. There isn’t a marketplace out there that isn’t more crowded than it
was a decade ago.
In a world where products are screaming for attention, the most precious commodity is
attention. And attention is harder and harder to achieve.
If you already understand the power of permission, your next question might be, “Fine, but
how do we get permission? How do we get the first date... the first interaction where we ask
people if we can start an ongoing dialogue about our products and their needs?”
My answer used to be a rather weak mumble about buying ads. The right answer, however,
is to create an ideavirus. The right answer is to let the market tell itself about your products
and services and give you permission to continue the dialogue without your having to pay for
it each time. The right answer is to create products so dynamic and virusworthy that you
earn
the attention.

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Unleashing the Ideavirus
60
 www.ideavirus.com
There Are Three Key Levers That Determine How Your Ideavirus Will Spread:
Where do you start? What are the key elements worth focusing on to turbocharge your idea
and turn it into a virus? There are three things to focus on:
1.
How big do you launch?
2.
How smooth is it?
3.
How can you turn trial into persistence?
1. How many people know about it before the spreading starts?
You can launch big or you can launch small. Vindigo (a viral phenomenon discussed in
detail later) launched their Palm ideavirus with just 100 people. Within weeks, that number
had grown to 3,000, and then quickly to more than 100,000. All without advertising.
However, if you’re entering a vacuum and there’s plenty of competition on the horizon,
launching big (while more expensive) can increase the chances that you’ll succeed.
How to launch big? With traditional interruption advertising. With sponsorships. With free
samples. One of the dumbest things marketers do is put artificial barriers in the way of trial.
For example, it’s obvious that one of the best ways to kill sales of a new car is to charge
people $100 to take a test drive.
But charging for a test drive is just as dumb as a politician charging people to hear a speech,
or a movie studio charging for the coming attractions. When you launch an ideavirus, the
more people who can see it 
fast
, the faster it will spread.

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