“Let’s make something viral”. A marketing colleague of mine gets this line from his clients. His reponse: “well, do something good, then”.

I also got a line recently: “how can we get some word of mouth marketing?”. Trust me, you don’t want word-of-mouth marketing, you want viral marketing. And here’s why.

Actually, I will cheat and summarize Seth Godin’s blog post today: Is viral marketing the same as word of mouth?

Word of mouth marketing decays. The message is repeated a few times and fades. A good meal, a bad flight (to use Seth’s examples). Unless the story is unique and memorable, the bad flight story sticks around long enough to be replaced by another bad flight story. The marketer usually needs to repeat the story over and over before there is any staying power.

Viral marketing takes off like a virus - grows, replicates and spreads without the marketer’s assistance. Something that is so good it cannot help but spread. The marketer is out of the loop after the initial seeding; the idea spreads on its own from person to person.

Which brings me to milk.

Or, more specifically, Get the Glass. First of all, milk (actually, the California Milk Processor Board) has done brilliant viral marketing - Got Milk? is a cultural meme.

But Get the Glass is a whole lot of fun. I got an email from a good friend of mine today insisting I had to look at this game. And I played it. And I was wowed. And I will pass it on to my friends.

‘Nuff said. Go look it up. And pass it on.

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