Meme: ‘A self-propagating unit of social imitation; something that people repeat and pass along’. Or, ‘Memes replicate data. And just as genes replicate genetic data, memes replicate cultural ideas’. Or, ‘lolcats’.

However you describe them, everyone loves a good meme. And, since the term was popularised by Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book ‘The selfish gene’, advertising has been responsible for generating many well-known examples. (Here’s one, oops sorry…no, two examples (in one): ‘Will it blend?’ for Blendtec.) And with the connectedness and social media channels offered by the web for brands to spread and share content, you would have thought that conditions were perfect for many more… Read More »

I used to have a boss with an amazing knack for sidling up to the desk of a junior researcher late on a Friday afternoon to ask, “How are you fixed?”.

This meant one thing: a flash poll or fast-turnaround survey put into the field that day and reported back to the client as soon as it was done. A flash poll in those days, for me, was the first sign that a client was in trouble. Some crisis had hit and we needed to dive in to understand how much people knew, how much they were affected by that knowledge and how to fix any damage to the brand or bottom line. We joked that we needed a big red button to push to set off a siren so that everyone would know that it was going to be a long night or two. Read More »

Super infographic here looking at how content goes viral, what makes it tick and what you need to know to get it right. It begins with Metcalfe’s law, which calculates the value of a network.

It walks through to the anatomy of viral content, types of viral content, reasons we share and viral content design. Read More »

New ad for Samsung Galaxy S II shows urban scene kids with delusions of creative greatness (who are actually baristas, apparently) queuing for the latest iPhone. It goes on to show people outside the queue who already have a great phone with 4G and a big, bright screen. Read More »

If you have kids you probably already have your camera out and no wonder. YouTube says that hundreds of families are earning as much as six-figure sums from videos of their kids doing and saying “funny” things that are going massively viral.

Some of these are big business and no more so than the world’s most watched: ‘Charlie bit my finger – again’, which has been watched a staggering 387 million times.

And that is not including the 85 million who have watched variations of the original video including a remix and an autotune cut. Read More »

News, views and reviews now travel at incredible velocity online. This video reviews how social news can have a profound effect on anyone because the public has already made up its mind on the issue before you’ve even responded to it.

Think England football captain John Terry, the claimed cyber-lynching of a US Presidential candidate, the BlackBerry outage? Read More »

A not unamusing AT&T ad for and its Blackberry Torch package. That isn’t the important bit it is one of the actors in the spot Nate Dern who posted the ad on Reddit saying that after “three years of auditioning, I booked my first commercial. I say ‘Huh?’ in this AT&T spot. Just wanted to share”.

And share he did. The ad has been viewed 500,000 times, it has 6,476 likes (only 159 dislikes) and a whopping 7,315 comments. Take a look and let us know if you have any idea how that happened? Read More »

Go Viral’s latest list of the biggest viral videos this month includes appearances from Angry Bird, Siri on iPhone 4S, GoPro, Nike’s Jordan Melo M8, British Airways and the Hot Girl vs. Zombie among others. Read More »

Goviral’s top 10 global videos of the month for September 2011 has some crackers including the very funny Carlsberg biker ad as well as George Clooney in the DnB Norwegian bank ad, apparel company, Vooray, Red Bull and F1 going to America and the full length spot for the hotly anticipated Battlefield ad to the tune of Jay-Z’s “99 Problems. Enjoy. Read More »

Brand storytelling is a bit of a buzzword right now. You can’t read a magazine, blog or agency website without it cropping up in some form or other. I guess it’s not rocket science; people love stories. When they resonate, we connect with them, we remember them with ease and we pass them on. Looking at these potential outcomes, it’s no wonder brands and marketers are keen to understand how to create brand stories that give them these types of results. Read More »