Unleashing the Ideavirus

Unleashing the Ideavirus
95
 www.ideavirus.com
to create a trading card mania among third graders, launching a series of cards available only
at liquor stores isn’t going to enhance the vector, even if you seed the virus by handing the
cards out at the local elementary school.
But this is about more than simple access. Remember, the goal is to market to people and
then get out of the way. So an email joke (which almost anyone with a job in this country
could access at home, at work or at the library) will still find its vector. How? There are three
factors:
1.
Who it starts with.
Often, the way we decide which direction to send an idea is based on
where it came from. It’s hard, for example, to bring home a joke from the office. Instead,
we’re more likely to send it straight back into the quadrant of life from which it came.
2.
Who it resonates with
. An idea has to have impact to be worth sharing at all, and we’re
much more likely to share that idea with someone whom we believe it will impact as
well. After all, if we spread ideas that don’t go viral, it hurts our reputation as powerful
sneezers. This encompasses the idea of access… I’m not likely to spread an idea if the
recipient doesn’t have the energy or the technology or the resources to get engaged with
it.
3.
What’s easy.
The medium drives the spread of ideas more than you might imagine. If I
have to print something out, put it in an envelope and mail it to someone, that virus is
going to stop right there. That’s why TV and the Internet have proven to be such
powerful media for the spread of viruses—they’re easy.

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Unleashing the Ideavirus
96
 www.ideavirus.com
Medium
Scientists wasted hundreds of years looking for the medium by which light traveled. They
knew it was making it through the vacuum of space, through water and through air, but
without a medium, they couldn’t figure out how it worked.
The medium is probably the most overlooked part of ideavirus planning and construction.
It’s so obvious, we often don’t see it.
In Japan, teenage schoolgirls started and built a craze to billion-dollar proportions. They
continue to line up to use a special kind of photo booth. Here’s how it works: You enter the
photo booth (similar to the old Polaroid ones of our youth), insert a some coins and it takes
your picture.
But, instead of giving you four shots on a strip, it prints out 16 little tiny one-square-inch
images on stickers.
Now, what are you going to do with 16 pictures of yourself on stickers? Obvious—share
them with your friends! As a result, every popular Japanese schoolgirl has an autograph book
loaded with dozens or hundreds of these stickers. Sort of like your high school yearbook
signing ceremony, but on steroids.
A friend of mine, Sam Attenberg, developed and patented this technology in the States. And
while it never became a full-fledged virus in the U.S., it did develop pockets of intense
activity in certain hives. Some machines were turning $70 an hour in sticker business, every
hour on the hour for weeks at a time. In Japan, two companies dominate a multi-billion-
dollar industry in Sticker Stations.
So what’s the medium? It’s the person-to-person exchange of stickers. The medium is the key
to the entire virus. Once the first person got the sheet of stickers, the only way she could use
them was by sharing them with 15 friends. But in sharing them, in using the medium
provided, she had to explain where she got them. Boom. Virus spreads.

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