How to reach a million people
by Andrew Smith on 26/07/07 at 9:20 pm
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If you had lived in the 1800’s and you wanted 1 million people to see your brand or your face, how would you have done it? Short of marrying the king and having some sort of decree passed, it would have been nigh impossible.
During the 1900’s the advent of mass media made it a bit easier. If you had a big enough advertising budget you could invade the living rooms of a nation in between their favourite show. Or you could do something incredible like land on the moon or play in the World Cup Final.
In 2007 it feels so much easier. Take these guys for example:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEc8v1OWeE4[/youtube]
Paul and Greg hooked up a cheap video camera to an even cheaper video editing package, pushed some lego pieces around a white sheet, and 38 hours later they uploaded their work to YouTube. At the time of writing this their video is about to reach its millionth view and it’s only been up for 2 months.
This guy took a photo of himself every day for 6 years:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6B26asyGKDo[/youtube]
Just under 6.5 million people have watched Noah grow a bit older.
2 other guys created this clip with Post-It notes and a window:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qC_-Nx2CWR4[/youtube]
That cracked a million views recently. (Does that MTN ad look familiar now?)
Creating something original that has the potential to go viral is not an exact science. When I said it was "easy" to reach a million people, I mean that it doesn’t require any expensive tools or expertise. The internet has flattened the world to the point that anyone can reach everyone, and for a small business this is very exciting. If you happened to create something viral that had your brand patched to the end it could be a serious profile booster.
So is it worth attempting? I’m thinking that perhaps we should try creating one viral video per month and see if any of them take off. If nothing else it would get our creative juices going, encourage us to do some whacky things, and help us learning some marketing lessons on what makes an idea spread.
Sounds better than playing the lotto?
Andrew Smith is the pedantic systems guy behind Live Alchemy, a SA e-commerce company. Andrew writes for Ideate in an attempt to make the world a more efficient place. View more articles by Andrew Smith.
