Going viral...

One of the things I’ve been doing recently in my growing portfolio of what I  like to laughingly call ‘life activities’ is writing Facebook posts for a US based company who make designer bags for men to keep nappy changing paraphernalia in.

Now that is a long sentence (the above words and not the activity) and yes... I know, I know, a lot of people hate those posts - and as for men who keep their nappies in designer bags…well. 

But the world is changing, and so rapidly that nothing really surprises me any more, so I just try to go with the flow despite my natural reaction to push against the tide. So social network advertising it is, even advertising for nappy (or diapers as the US call them) bags. After all there is no dishonour to be found in nappies, other stuff yes, but not dishonour. 

Anyway, Facebook promo posts (or proomoos as they are known) seem to be a bit hit and miss from a 'liking' perspective. There’s no telling what people will like, and it’s the ‘likes’ and ‘shares’ that are the objective of the game. Get one to go viral and a lot of low cost publicity and product and brand recognition is created.

My own self-penned favourite to date has been a reference to nappies, a Roy Lichenstein painting, and how the nappy filler might be a budding genius. I thought it was quirky and clever – well done me - but it didn’t get a single ‘like’ or a ‘share’. How very disappointing.

I did a little better with quiz type posts, but soon realised that if you want to score big on the internet it really does come down to cute kittens, ducklings and iddie biddie babies.

Anyway the one that you see in this post has gone viral. To date it has 4,700 likes, 94,784 shares and had been viewed by 6.5 million people just 24 hours after being posted. Oddly I feel quite a sense of achievement having come up with a viral post. If only I had a penny for each time it’s been viewed. I don’t even know how I arrived at it really. I suppose my thought process was something like ‘who is that baby phoning and why?’

If I were to analyse why I thought it has caught fire in the way it has I’d have to say that the baby (who isn’t that cute) is a big part of it and probably the fact that he’s seen performing an adult action – using a mobile – also has something to do with it. But I had a sleeping baby being cuddled by a sleeping cat posted last week that didn’t do anywhere near as well, so it can’t be quite as simple as babies and animals.

I think that it has to be that the caption I wrote has triggered some shared response in a lot of people. Maybe it’s the reference to Grandma – the fact that you can get anything you want out of Grandparents if you ask. Or maybe it’s the implied threat to ‘tell on you mum and dad’, or maybe it's just the Grandma's who are sharing and liking. Whatever it is, it’s there; shared amusement and sentiment caused by something that wouldn’t really happen but if it did could lead to some interesting outcomes.

I think it begins to tell a story that each of us finishes in our own heads. What do you think?