Viral marketing is a hot topic, because it’s a sort of covert strategy of getting Internet users to circulate and promote advertisments on their own. This means that viral marketing has a certain amount of appeal based on its underground nature. There is something sneaky and calculating about it which seems to attract a tremendous amount of interest. After all, for anyone trying to promote a new product or service, viral marketing offers the tantalizing possibility of creating a hugely profitable and successful campaign using a bare minimum of money and effort. The problem is that being successfully viral involves thinking successfully outside of the box, and that is easier said than done.

When most people talk about viral marketing, the things that they have in mind are not really that far from being mainstream. In other words, most things that are commonly perceived as “viral” are very close to not being viral at all, because it is obvious that there is some kind of marketing ploy going on. For example, consider the viral videos that are created and uploaded with the hope that people will then circulate these videos to each other. YouTube, in particular, is littered with this kind of content. Alternatively, some viral marketing involves sponsored events, where – for example – a particular brand of liquor might throw a party at a nightclub. The idea is that people are not supposed to notice these things as marketing, and they will spread information or favorable opinions to other people.

What businesses have evidently figured out is that in our current Internet-heavy culture, memes have a surprising amount of power. Any idea or image that you can spread through the Internet will grow seemingly on its own, as long as it strikes the right chord with people. What businesses have failed to realize is that it is terribly difficult to predict which memes will succeed and spread, and that the success of a meme relies heavily on its origins and just how underground or counterculture it seems to be. In other words, if something looks like marketing at all, or if any marketing intention is apparent in a message, it will fail to become a truly viral meme. If it looks like you’re trying to create viral advertising, you are failing at creating viral advertising. So it is my opinion that in order to create a better, truly successful viral advertising campaign, two conditions must be met:

1. Whatever content is created must not give any indication of being commercial.
2. The content must seem to originate naturally within an online community, and it must be a community made up of extremely knowledgeable computer experts, techies, hackers, etc.

Now, I want to be very clear about what I mean by this second condition. The meme for the viral campaign cannot originate on Facebook, or Google+, or Twitter, or Yahoo Answers, or the website for the New York Times, or any other mainstream site. The most pervasive Internet memes never originate in this places; and in fact, they rarely show their faces there. Nonetheless, everyone seems to be aware of these memes.

Consider some of the most widespread Internet memes: Keyboard Cat, Duckroll, Philosiraptor, Pedobear, FFFFUUUUU!, the Rainbow Dog, Woll Smith, LOLCats, Mudkips, “Your argument is invalid” pictures, and “Peanut Butter Jelly Time” – which represent a mere handful among many, many others. LOLCats, in particular, are universal. Everyone has seen the cat pictures with funny captions. Have you ever noticed that the font of the captions is always Impact? Have you noticed that the “cat speak” used in the captions is relatively standard, with rules of spelling and grammar? Although individual websites dedicated to these LOLCats have sprung up, none of the websites created the meme or standardized its presentation. They only capitalize on the meme’s popularity. The same is true with any of these other Internet memes.

(See more on Know Your Meme)
By far the most fertile breeding ground for successful Internet memes is the discussion board 4chan. Because 4chan is entirely anonymous, and no one ever gets or posts under a user name, it offers an almost completely uncensored environment for generating content. 4Chan is also primarily an image-based board, rather than text-based, and any discussion that does occur is around or pertaining to images posted by users. In my opinion, 4chan is the single best place for starting up a viral campaign, although some other sites may be useful as well, as long as they are frequented by the right people.

What makes 4chan so ideal is that everything posted is done so anonymously. Someone hoping to start a viral campaign could make posts on 4chan, and as long as the posts didn’t look commercial, no one would suspect a thing. All you have to do is come up with an unusual image, or a funny string of words along with some picture, and if other people like it, they will pick it up and spread it everywhere, far beyond 4chan itself. The best content for a potential meme is something that can be turned into a macro. If you can take the image for the meme and put different text on it and have it still be funny, or if you can take the image and put it into another picture and have it still be funny, it stands a much greater chance of succeeding as a meme. (Some good examples of this are the Bayeux Tapestry and Philosiraptor memes.)

Therefore, the challenge is to come up with an image, or an image-based piece of content, that fundamentally promotes what it is you are trying to advertise, but which does it in a subtle way, and which people will want to tweak in order to make it their own. Then, you post it on 4chan – at least, as a start – and wait to see if it spreads. If it fails to spread and go viral, you can see how the other 4chan users reacted to your post, and alter your approach for the next attempt.

The benefit of this strategy of viral marketing is that it is truly viral. A meme created in this way can spread to Internet users throughout the world, without their ever being aware that it is a marketing campaign. Consumer resistance to the campaign would be extremely low to nonexistent, and there exists the potential to subtly manipulate the public’s opinion of a brand.