Big Business needs to check its screen time and stop throwing money at trying to go viral
A viral TikTok about a Negroni Sbagliato pushed up Lidl’s prosecco sales, but the truly valuable viral videos are luck of the draw, writes Sascha O’Sullivan
“When I grow up, I want to go viral.” So said 40 per cent of 16-24-year-olds, according to Mastercard. Facebook has all but lost this generation, Instagram too is flagging, but TikTok and BeReal are two new social media apps vying for the attention of a generation.
The race to go viral is not new, and has been around in its current incarnation since the days of Tumblr, albeit to a lesser degree. When I was kicking around on the quasi-blog quasi-social media site set up by David Karp, having upwards of 15,000 followers was considered, certainly in limited circles, quite a flex.
Now the measurements are in hundreds of thousands if not millions, and it’s not just each other influencers are competing with to go viral, it’s big business.
At the end of last year, Lidl recorded its busiest day of sales ever. It put its success not simply down to people swapping to cheaper products in a Christmas blighted by a cost-of-living crisis, but also to the curious case of the Negroni Sbagliato. If you haven’t heard of it, you’re probably over the age of 35 (commiserations).
The classic cocktail with a twist found fame after Emma D’Carcy, actor in the House of the Dragon, said the drink, made with a splash of Prosecco, was their poison of choice.
The discount supermarket said they recorded a surge in sales of Prosecco after 32.9 million people watched the 20 second clip. And that’s just the original video. By its nature, TikTok encourages users to make their own spin offs of viral videos, creating a snowball effect.
And brands want in.
From Odeon to Specsavers, businesses are throwing huge amounts of time and money into social media fame. In early 2021, Weetabix went viral for putting baked beans on their cereal. More than 25 other brands piggybacked off of the frankly disgusting looking combination, and even Jacob Rees-Mogg, the then Leader of the House of Commons, weighed in on the virtues of baked beans and how best to eat Weetabix.
While Lidl claim the TikTok helped them with a very tangible metric – sales – the virtues of these campaigns are more ephemeral.
Dom Boyd, managing director of Kantar Insights, says it’s about creating “positive currency”, so while it may not directly turn into more sales, if people have to choose between Weetabix and an alternative, going viral might mean they pick the former.
But he admits, “like all great creativity”, it is “very, very hard” to create something organically viral.
It could also be money wasted. According to Alex Payne, former Sky Sports host and co-founder of Room Unlocked, an agency geared towards creating relationships between brands and influencers, a decent amount of the successful viral campaigns have been down to luck.
For example, in 2020, Nathan Apadoca was trying to get to his job at an Idaho potato warehouse. His car broke down, so he jumped on a longboard and skated the rest of the way, all the while chugging a bottle of Ocean Spray cranberry juice. A video of his trip to work, overlaid with Dreams by Fleetwood Mac, went viral, along with the fruity drink.
Ocean Spray hadn’t put any money behind Apadoca, but they benefited from more than 27 million views in a few days.
Payne says the value of going viral is being part of a cultural conversation. In other words, brands are trying to buy access to The Zeitgeist.
It won’t happen, however, with glossy Instagram posts. It’ll happen with videos like Apadoca and that can’t necessarily be bought.
One household frozen food name wanted a highly-curated new social media campaign with pictures of their product at a 45 degree angle. Payne turned them down, because to go viral, it has to be “authentic”. Another elusive concept.
In comparison, Odeon reached millions of people by ceding control to a movie lover with a decent Instagram following who posted blurry videos of him at different screenings.
Often going viral means being funny. But as any comedian will tell you, jokes come with a risk.
Tampax, for example, thought they were funny when they tweeted: “You’re in their DMS. We’re in them. We’re not the same.”
They were accused, rightly, of misogyny and ultimately faced an embarrassing climb down.
The value of virality can be quickly obscured by a highly-shareable bungle. Businesses are always going to want to jump on the Cool New Thing. But the rule of thumb is they’re almost always a few steps behind the 20-something-year-olds they want to reach. Going viral might be great for their street cred, but the best videos will be #unfiltered (which, by the way, is not a thing anymore). So maybe it is time for firms to check their screen time.