Unleashing the Ideavirus-Seth Godin
The author, Seth Godin follows up his hugely successful title “Permission Marketing”
with this gem of a book about how to promote anything using the “Ideavirus” a word he
coined to describe the procedure of spreading your idea. This book talks about the new
age phenomenon where the real money comes from making huge networks of people
who are the future consumers of the products that one if trying to sell. An example of
Myspace and facebook getting valuation worth multi million dollars without a single
source of revenue illustrates the importance of building a network.
The book says that the time is gone when the marketer used to talk to the consumer about
the products and expect the consumer to interpret the message in exactly the same way in
which he wants them to. However, due to increasing intolerance for irrelevant
information among consumers, the technique of carpet bombing the message to a wide
spectrum of people and expecting them to respond is a sure recipe of failure. In stead, the
marketer must just subtly drop the idea virus in the target segment and let the users talk to
each other i.e. let the virus spread on its own in the target segment.
The author describes the spreading of the virus as an important learning tool to know how
to diffuse an idea in the environment. Just like the virus needs a right medium to
propagate, the ideas too need the right sets of people to spread. Also, just as the virus
modifies itself as it spreads, so does the idea according to the author. Therefore, an idea
needs a right medium to get modified in the manner desirable to the person spreading the
ideavirus.
The book talks about two types of sneezers, promiscuous and powerful sneezers. It says
that the promiscuous sneezers are motivated by some incentive, mostly monetary for
spreading the virus. On the other hand, the powerful sneezers are the ones who are
respected by the general mass and whatever trend they introduce, a large number of
people are bound to follow. However, a very thin line exists between the two types of
sneezers, so if a powerful sneezer accepts money or any other favour to promote any
product then some amount of power is lost in the process. So, care should be taken so as
to not overuse the powerful sneezer frequently for commercial gains.
The books also talks about the velocity or virus spreading and smoothness of the process.
Due to the advent of internet, ideas are spreading faster than they did in past. However,
we need to ensure that the virus is spreading in the direction as was desirable; else the
virus would be lost. Smoothness implied the ease with which one can get affected or
smitten by the virus. The author illustrates the example of the application Vintigo used
over Palm OS. The application has the feature of sending it to ones friends free of cost.
So, as soon as any friend requested for it, they got it. It is imperative that the ideavirus
spread smoothly because the more difficult it is to spread, the faster it will die out. The
author also gives the example of how the parodies can be cleverly used to generate more
interest in the film and that parodies actually does more good than harm to the film
publicity.
The book talks about the value of ideas depending upon their life size. The book
compares between the works of Van Gogh and news article to state that the idea that Van
Gogh thought about a few centuries back are relevant and the people are paying money to
buy a medium which Van Gogh used to communicate his idea. In contrast, the
newspapers carry news which has a very short life span, so nobody really cares about
preserving these ideas.
All in all, a nice descriptive way to emphasise on the importance of idea generation and
idea management in today’s world. The author has done a great job in making this book a
nice read especially for those who want to start their own firms and have little or no clue
about how to create a buzz about their product in the market.