Unleashing the Ideavirus

Unleashing the Ideavirus
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 www.ideavirus.com
But Isn’t It Obvious?
One of the big challenges I faced with 
Permission Marketing
and now with 
Unleashing the
Ideavirus
is that a lot of stuff in these books seems pretty obvious. It’s obvious that marketing
to people who want to be marketed to is more effective than interrupting people who hate
you. It’s obvious that word of mouth is more powerful than ads. It’s obvious that the winner
takes all online. It’s obvious….
But precisely because it’s so obvious, it needs to be written about. Defined. Measured.
Because it’s so obvious, it’s easy to fall into a 100-year-old habit and start doing business the
old-fashioned (expensive but easy) way.
After all, if ideavirus marketing is so obvious, why does eToys need to raise $100 million in
venture capital to pay for old-fashioned advertising? Why are the TV networks having their
best year ever in advertising revenues? Why do really smart businesses suddenly turn stupid
when faced with ad opportunities like Planetfeedback.com?
Because to embrace ideavirus marketing techniques you also have to accept a change from
the status quo. And many of the executives who are now in charge made their way to the top
by embracing the status quo, not fighting it.
It’s much easier to raise venture money with a plan that says you’re going to spend $30
million or $60 million dollars on traditional advertising than it is with a plan that says you’ll
only spend $3 million but employ elegant but difficult techniques to get the word out.
It’s much easier to run the marketing department of a Fortune 500 company around the
command-and-control interruption techniques that got the company there in the first place
than it is to allow the customer to be in charge. And it’s far more difficult to devote your
research and development efforts to building ideaviruses than it is to stick with the
traditional incremental improvements.
Even marketers have heroes. Some kids grow up wanting to be like Sandy Koufax or Bart
Starr. But most of us imagined creating the next great TV commercial or building the next

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