Unleashing the Ideavirus

Unleashing the Ideavirus
134
 www.ideavirus.com
voices—from nerds to magazines—are happy to trumpet the idea that there is a faster, better
way to search than using the tried and true favorites.
As you think about a corporate virus or a personal one, consider: What you are the 
best
or
the 
most
at? How can you refine and amplify those traits to create a Wow! product…a
world’s record holder that is worth mentioning?
And by the way, if you’re not facing a vacuum (and most of us aren’t lucky enough to be in
that position) you’ve got to be ten times better than what’s already there, if you’re going to
start your own virus.

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Unleashing the Ideavirus
135
 www.ideavirus.com
In Defense Of World Domination
Targeting isn’t enough. Being a world record holder isn’t enough either. You also need to
dominate your hive.
Having 5,000 loyal, rabid fans of your ideavirus is great. Unless, of course, your audience is
the population of Massachusetts. To dominate Massachusetts you need a lot more fans than
that. Without the power of reinforcement, your virus will peter out. Unless individuals are
hearing from sneezers again and again, your virus will slow and will probably die out over
time.
Imagine, instead, that you have 5,000 fans at Stanford University, which is a hive with a
population of about 15,000. The chances that you’ll be exposed to every other member of
the hive is huge. Why? Because if each one of the 5,000 fans tells just a few other people,
you’re already hitting each person more than once. And if the idea is virusworthy, that’s
probably enough to dominate the entire campus. Even the laggards will surrender when they
see everyone else is doing it (even the accounting department at my old company did the
Macarana at the company Christmas party).
Malcolm Gladwell calls this the tipping pointD—the idea that creating and propagating an
ideavirus is not enough. The biggest win comes the last time your virus doubles in size. The
biggest win comes when you’ve so dominated the hive that the last folks (who are often the
most profitable folks) can’t help but come along. They tip because they hear from so many
respected sneezers that they feel they have no choice but to get on the bandwagon.
This happened with AOL. A few years ago, AOL was paying $300 in marketing costs to get
one new member. All those CDs that showed up in every magazine were expensive, but they
were effective.
But how could AOL justify spending $300 to get a member who had a lifetime value of just
$124? Jan Brandt, the genius behind the campaign, realized that if she could win at this
expensive part of the curve, the game would soon turn in her favor. She knew that once she

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