Unleashing the Ideavirus

Unleashing the Ideavirus
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 www.ideavirus.com
email or whatever with the virus in question, because our (local, at least) reputation is at
stake.”
This insight goes to the core of why ideaviruses are succeeding and why traditional marketers
don’t immediately grasp this approach (or permission marketing for that matter.) The
distributed nature of the decision is the antithesis of the command-and-control General
Patton approach that marketers have taken previously.
The reason that 
The Red Herring, The Industry Standard
and other magazines are jammed
with ads is not because the ads always work. They don’t. The reason the ads are purchased is
that in exchange for money the marketer gets the illusion that they’re in charge of the
conversation, at least for a few seconds.
Bill Bernbach, the dean of American Advertising, was co-founder of DDB Advertising. He
died twenty years ago, but before he left us, he pointed the way to this “new” way of
marketing:
“You cannot sell a man who isn’t listening; word of mouth is the best
medium of all; and dullness won’t sell your product, but neither will
irrelevant brilliance.”
The answer, of course, is to give people a reason to listen and then create an infrastructure
that will amplify their ability to spread word of mouth. And core to both of those tasks is the
new respect that marketers need to show newly powerful consumers.

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Unleashing the Ideavirus
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 www.ideavirus.com
SECTION 2: How To Unleash An Ideavirus
STEAL THIS IDEA!
Here’s what you can do to spread the word about 
Unleashing the Ideavirus:
1. Send this file to a friend (it’s sort of big, so ask first).
2. Send them a link to 
www.ideavirus.com
so they can download it themselves.
3. Visit 
www.fastcompany.com/ideavirus
to read the 
Fast Company
article.
4. Buy a copy of the hardcover book at
www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0970309902/permissionmarket
.
5. Print out as many copies as you like.

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