Unleashing the Ideavirus

Unleashing the Ideavirus
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 www.ideavirus.com
Hakuhodo, one of the largest ad agencies in Japan, used a similar approach and turned it
into a national craze. It seems that sending New Year’s cards is a big deal in Japan…much
bigger than Christmas cards.
Most people buy their cards at the post office—envelope and stamp included. When you
send a card, it comes with a lottery ticket, good for a small prize if the recipient wins (a
bicycle, a radio, etc.).
Hakuhodo runs their promotion on the Net. And the cards are free to send (no stamps, no
fee). But the best part is that if the person you’re writing to wins, 
you win the same prize
. So,
the more you send, the happier your friends are, and of course, the happier you are.
Not only did this promotion go viral, it turned into an epidemic. In 1998, 25% of the
people with Net access in Japan either sent or received one of Hakuhodo’s cards. And
Hakuhodo cashed out by selling ads in each and every one of those cards.
In order to turn these public ideaviruses into useful, long-term assets, the companies that
create them need to gain permission from people to follow up directly. Then, they go back to
private marketing, at a very low cost, with excellent results, until they’re ready to go public
again with another virus.
Of course, going public doesn’t mean you have to run a selfishly oriented promotion. When
I was in college, the gay and lesbian center ran a campus-wide activity called “Wear jeans on
Wednesday if you’re gay.” Suddenly, something that had been a private topic was now the
topic of discussion among everyone. If you weren’t wearing jeans, was that because you were
afraid that people thought you were gay? Is there something wrong with being seen as gay,
whether you were or not?
One simple act turned the notion of sexual preference into an ideavirus and generated
thousands of hours of intense discussions about how society (and how we) viewed the issue.

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