Every marketer dreams of creating something that will go viral. One of my favorite books on marketing was devoted to this. It's called Contagious. I will do a future post on the 6 takeaways of that book within a week. But today I just wanted to take a brief look at the most viral video ever created.
Candace Payne is a stay at home mom. She has been married for 15 years. She is friends with a little over 100 people on Facebook. She posts pictures of her family, and occasional posts about her church outings. Nothing about this woman said she is about to create something that will "break the internet".
She has posted a few videos of her discussing things like her argument with her kids about the lyrics to the Lion King song, and trying to do her nails on her own for the first time. They are designed for her relatives and friends to stay connected with her. So when she came out of Kohl's Thursday morning, yes 2 days ago, and recorded another video in her car on Facebook, she had no intention of making it spread. Candace wanted to express her joy in finding a Chewbacca mask. She just found it hysterical. You can see the video here Facebook Page here.
As of today, Saturday, she now has 436,000 followers on Facebook. Her video has been viewed over 115 million times! This is all in less than 48 hours! So how can we explain this? She didn't post the video at the time people who follow the algorithm of Facebook suggest we post. She didn't tag influencers. She didn't even include a fun hashtag. She simply posted her 4 minute video with the line "It's the simple joys in life".
The only explanation I can provide comes from her line. Joy. The world wants true joy. Marketers have always known that. Beer, sneakers, sodas, cars and most everything else that takes up a large portion of the marketing pie, usually focus on how you will feel with their product rather than on the taste, performance, or dependability.
So back to the most viral video ever created. Here's the secret. Candace's joy. You can't duplicate it with actors. You can't fake it, even if you're a professional faker, aka an actor.. If you're ever in a position to record your customers interacting with your product while they're in the middle of a moment like Candace was having, that's gold! The Chewbacca mask that she bought Thursday morning was in the clearance section., was moved back to full price by Friday because of demand. By Friday afternoon, they were sold out. And by sold out I don't mean just at Kohls. CNBC says they are sold out at Wal Mart, Target, Toys R Us, and Amazon. These masks have been on the market for months. The Star Wars fans had bought up their share. The cycle was over. Then one mom showed the joy that she had from buying a mask and the world wanted the mask, because what they really want is her joy. The secret is joy.