Unleashing the Ideavirus

Unleashing the Ideavirus
163
 www.ideavirus.com
There’s also a vacuum here. Nobody else is offering this value proposition to this audience.
And finally, because online traders tend to be more technically astute, the friction induced by
the download will be less of a barrier.
After infecting the trader hive, will the enfish virus jump to other hives? Perhaps. But in
order to do that, enfish needs to make two significant changes to their product (remember,
the best ideaviruses are integrated right into the product, not tacked on at the end by the
marketing department).
The first change is to create significant benefits to users that derive from enfish’s scale. In
other words, create a network effect so there’s a natural monopoly.
The second change is to create clear and obvious incentives for existing enfish users to
evangelize and bring in new enfish users. These could be simple bribes, but it’s much, much
more effective if the incentives are related to the product—making it work better when you
have more buddies involved.
If they can accomplish these two tricky tasks (so tricky you’ll notice I haven’t even told you
how to do it!), then the odds of the virus jumping from the trader hive to the Net audience
at large increases dramatically.

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Unleashing the Ideavirus
164
 www.ideavirus.com
Hey, Skinny!
One of the most successful books of the last five years has been 
The Atkins Diet
. Dr. Atkins
has sold more than seven million copies of his books...with almost no advertising.
How does a marketing phenomenon like this happen? Conventional marketing wisdom says
that he would need to spend tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars to motivate the one
out of every 40 Americans who has rushed out and bought his book.
The secret to the book’s success is that the diet was virusworthy. Unlike other diets, it really
generates remarkable results in a very short time (let’s leave the health discussion for another
book).
But being virusworthy isn’t enough. It was also smooth. All you had do to tell someone what
diet you were on was say one word, “Atkins.” Because the author became synonymous with
the diet, it was easy to spread.
But the real secret was amplification. Word of mouth could never generate seven million
conversions, not without being amplified.
So what was the amplifier? Your skinnyness! Whenever the diet worked, nosy and proud
friends would ask the dieter, “Hey, skinny! You look great. How’d you do it?” And the dieter
would proudly respond: “Atkins.”
This self-fueling virus saved Atkins millions. And it would never work for transcendental
meditation, St. Johns Wort or reflexology. Nobody is going to notice your inner peace, after
all. Yes, we may be obsessed with the way we look, but it also leads to powerful viruses.
If you doubt the power of this, take a look at all the tattooed kids on the beach.

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