VIDEO: Questioning the Basic Assumptions of Viral Marketing

While this report is interesting, I think it omits some key aspects of Duncan Watt's report that make his findings less relevant to marketers. Most importantly, the report looks only at interpersonal networks and how individuals directly affect the opinion of people they have a direct relationship with. Every buzz marketing program I've encountered relies not only (or even primarily) on this type of network, but rather on the amplification of an influential's opinion via their blog, video sharing, or social network. In fact the report states: "Thus although the question of how different forms of influence- including traditional media, web, and interpersonal influence- compare and interact with each other is indeed an interesting one, it is outside the scope of this article, which deals only with interpersonal influence" (pg. 21-22). To take it back to the epidemic analogy, this is akin to modeling the spread of HIV or SARS without taking into account factors such as roads or jet travel that amplify the contagion.

Furthermore, the conclusions are based on the assumption that influencers must be found- again from the original report: "Influentials, by definition, are relatively rare- here they constitute 10% of the population- thus they are necessarily more difficult to locate than average individuals, and possibly more difficult to mobilize also." (pg 18). In reality, smart marketers design programs that individuals want to be a part of, and the interaction between the marketer makes this process much more effective. Not many people I know really believe that there is a magic group of influencers out there that we can approach and then grab our checks- instead it is developing an intimate knowledge of how communities interact with each other, and then packaging a program so that when a user steps onto an out-sized soapbox, our content has the value and portability to go from merely "lol" to phenomena. Thanks,

Sam Huxley
VP of Marketing
New Media Strategies