Going Viral in Three...Two...One...

Often i hear people saying, "Let's create a viral video!" ... and i am like... "Wtf are you talking about, mate?"

Virality has become an object of obsession for many. For me, something to go viral on the net needs to go beyond just the content, and also needs to cover important aspects of distribution and endorsement.

I have tried to summarize this with a simple formula:

Emotional Content + Right Distribution + Influencer Endorsement = Virality

During Mother's Day, we at TheBagTalk created a film which went viral on the web. Firstpost even called it a "Tear Jerker"...

While a lot of folks believed that we got lucky, this wasn't luck! It was a well thought through process.

Firstly: We got the content bang-on! While everyone was talking about how kids were going beyond their means to do something exceptional for their mothers, we knew that in today's fast-paced times children hardly got time to do that. The best someone could actually do was to "Post-n-Tag" an old picture from the archive. Alas, the mum that was being tagged, wasn't even on social media! Hence, we took a different approach to this... We kept it real... We changed the equation... Watch the ad:

Secondly: We chose our channel of communication correctly. We kept this 'digital-only' and did not approach the television medium. Even while sticking to digital platforms, we released a one minute version on Instagram, first on my handle which has ~300k followers. The idea was to start the hashtag "Milna Zaroori Hai" somewhere. Sticking to the digital social platforms ensured we kept our costs low. We released the lengthier version later on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter...

And Lastly: We got some major social media influencers to share this ad. Anita Hassanandani, Rannvijay Singh, Karan Patel, Shaheer Sheikh and other TV celebs helped us share this message with approx 10mn fans and followers. This kickstarted the process. The posts got re-tweeted and re-posted thousands of time, making the overall campaign VIRAL!

Like Jonah Berger said: "Virality isn't Born, it's Made!"