The Virus of Marketing

By: Jeffrey RayportTue Dec 18, 2007 at 5:41 PM

When it comes to getting a message out with little time, minimal budgets, and maximum effect, nothing on earth beats a virus.

Rule 5: Exploit the strength of weak ties

Sociologists have long noted that individuals with many casual social connections have a larger influence on communities than do individuals with fewer strong connections. Viruses thrive on weak ties. The movement of viruses over the Web -- a practically infinite collection of weak ties in countless virtual communities -- is a prime example.

In business, such tactics are the instinctive practice of companies engaging in multilevel marketing: marketers such as Tupperware, Amway, and Mary Kay Cosmetics, for instance. In each of these businesses, the strategy is to find a collection of individuals who excel at developing a large number of weak ties -- and use those ties to sell products and services. Tupperware, for example, gets someone in a social community, such as a suburban neighborhood, to host a party featuring Tupperware. Everything about the party is ostensibly noncommercial: it's her house, her food, her friends. But the social interaction is funded by the sale of Tupperware products. What's social is indistinguishable from what's commercial a powerful business network built on weak social ties.

Law 6: Invest to reach the tipping point

Viruses do not become epidemics until they reach the tipping point. In other words, the virus must expand through the host population until it reaches a certain threshold of visibility and scale. Think of it this way: a virus doubles each year. In year one, it's only 1% of the host and scarcely detectable. In year two, it's still minute, only 2%. But in year five, it's 16% -- and suddenly it's an epidemic. V-marketers must understand that they're playing the same game because the impact of exploiting weak ties does not come overnight.

That's why Microsoft's true leverage with its DOS and Windows operating systems took a decade to pay off. Today Microsoft operating systems run on an estimated 85 million PCs the world over. That's why CNN was viewed as a joke by the mainstream press -- until suddenly everyone from Saddam Hussein to Bill Clinton was getting real-time news exclusively from the 24-hour network.

And it's why an idea like v-marketing, which may look like an unpleasant, unlikely metaphor at first, will take a few years to win acceptance. But it will be essential to the success of lots of fast new businesses. And the sooner they know it, the better they'll do. So spread the word.