Unleashing the Ideavirus

Unleashing the Ideavirus
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 www.ideavirus.com
Wassup?
I first heard about the Superfriends parody in an email. Apparently, some clever animator
had taken the soundtrack of the ubiquitous Budweiser commercial and replaced the video
portion with Batman, Superman and Aquaman hamming it up and having a few brews.
Clicking on a link (pretty smooth transition from interest to exposure, you’ll notice), I see
that it’s on a reputable site and happens to be one of the most downloaded files (a bestseller
list!).
Soon, I’m laughing out loud. It really is funny. Of course, I’ve got to tell three friends, so I
do. It’s going viral.
A few weeks later, a site launches another Wassup parody. This one uses the AP photo of
Elian Gonzales as the star. But this time, the virus grows far faster, with more than 100,000
people seeing it in less than 24 hours.
Why did it grow so fast? Because everyone who had seen Superfriends and liked it didn’t
need much coaxing to get infected by this one. By tapping into a virus-friendly base, it took
much less effort for the marketer to get the message to spread.
(Of course, this is a paradox, because the ideavirus loves a vacuum. In this case there wasn’t
a vacuum—the Wassup parody was an old joke. So, in order to make an impact, it had to be
fresh and at least as funny. But once it cleared that hurdle, the rest was taken for granted.)
This time, though, the ending of the cycle was very different. The Associated Press fired off a
letter to the site behind the virus, claiming copyright infringement and not interested at all in
the idea of parody and its protection. So the short movie came down.
Inevitably, if you create a piece of digital media that becomes popular, someone is going to
parody it, or at the very least, use it in a way that you’re not delighted with. If your digital
media becomes 
that
popular, odds are you should embrace it, not fight it. Budweiser, for

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