It's official: at 8 million concurrent live streams, "Felix Jumps At 128k feet!" has broken the record for “live stream with the most concurrent views ever on YouTube."
In light of this record-breaking news, I ask the age-old (or rather, 7-year-old as YouTube was founded in 2005) question: how do you make a video go viral?
The answer is both simple and improbable: create something uniquely amazing. (I know. Vague).
Take a look at the top 3 viral videos to date:
1. KONY 2012 (100 million views in 6 days).
2. Susan Boyle: Britain's Got Talent (100 million views in 9 days).
3. Friday by Rebecca Black (100 million views in 45 days).
Notice that none of them are particularly short, humorous (not intentionally) or include a cute animal; three characteristics we generally believe will lead to viral success. Instead, the common denominator is that they are all unique and "amazing".
For KONY, it's the message and the execution; for Boyle, the unexpected talent; and for Friday, it's the mere fact that something so mediocre got green-lit to be an official music video at all.
What does this mean for brands? It means you can put a shit-ton of money towards ads, promoted posts, bloggers and more, but it won't work unless you've got something uniquely amazing to show. This is why sequels don't tend to do as well (think KONY: Part II or Old Spice's follow-up commercials).
Red Bull hit the jackpot with Felix's space-jumping video. They created something uniquely amazing, branded it, and it worked.
Til then,
Mae
Related links:
http://www.redbullstratos.com/technology/
You make a very good point. If there was a magical formula, then going viral would lose its value because everybody would be doing it.
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