Let’s face it, corporate buzzwords usually deserve an eye roll. Viral marketing is one of those terms that have been floating in the business vernacular for some time now, to many existing as a murky Web 2.0 whisper. It often raises eyebrows and inspires smirks towards what is believed to be a secret society of marketing counterculture. Conversations with sideline-sitters usually go something like this:

    “Yeah man, that piano cat has totally gone viral.”   

     “What? It has a cold?”

     "No, you know, that video of the cat playing piano.”

     “Huh?”

     "Forget it.”

But viral marketing, unlike something like ‘synergy’ or ‘blue-sky thinking’, isn’t a head fake. It operates like a virus, human or computer or otherwise. And when successful, viral marketing has the ability to launch a brand into orbit.

Going viral is an attempt to start a self-propagating phenomenon through the construct of online social networks. A business plants the seed (usually in multimedia form) and wrings their hands while hoping for a sprout. When it works, it has the power of transforming 13 YouTube views into 13 million.

But as a real-life green thumb may tell you, it’s not easy. You’re dealing with a fickle lot, who detest digesting any sort of marketing material. The Internet community lives by a credo, and the cardinal rule is that it doesn’t allow advertising to be forced upon them.

A good viral campaign is about creating something worth sharing. Just like guerrilla marketing, that usually means something clever or illuminating, with the best ones relating back to the brand. Unlike traditional marketing, however, there is no expectation to learn more. You’re not trying to teach your audience why Dawn gets dishes cleaner. You’re showing how Dawn can be sprayed on a tarp and made into a human catapult.

Burger King’s Subservient Chicken is the gold standard in viral marketing done right. As a Web site whose sole purpose is to command a chicken slave through typed commands, people flocked to the page to try and stump the bird. But with hundreds of commands created for the site, the labor of love kept people coming back and, consequently, talking.

Through the whole process, Burger King never pushed the values of their chicken menu. They were simply creating an Internet watercooler event while tethering the Burger King brand to it. Learning more rested on the free will of the end-user through links on the site.

But just as it can be done right, it also can go horribly wrong. There is a certain stigma attached to viral marketing. Many people, in seems, inherently see it as subterfuge. And while they wouldn’t be entirely wrong – fake blogs (‘flogs’) exist to peddle products as Joe Consumer and ‘astroturfing’ floods message boards with corporate agenda-setting – many times an honest attempt earns the viral label and becomes branded with a scarlet letter.     

This is often because the company behind the viral campaign distances itself in an attempt to grab the viewer before revealing its underpinnings. The net reaction, however, is people usually feeling duped. And although there are no guarantees on what will and won’t turn viral, there is a delicate balance that must be established with the presence of the business involved.

Take the viral campaign for apocalypse flick 2012, which launched a pseudo-scientific Web site entitled the “Institute for Human Continuity.” The site claimed hard data of a 94% chance of global destruction in two years time. The problem? Many people have an inordinate fear of the end of the world. Panic ensued, and so many calls and letters flooded NASA – Earth’s protectors, supposedly, after Armageddon made it so – that it had to make a counter site in response. Was this a successful campaign? Depends who you ask.

So if viral success can be hit-or-miss, why invest the time and resources? Even if your viral campaign isn’t a runaway success, a well-executed and properly-tended one can still generate buzz among your current base. And there is certainly a great value in connecting with customers on a different, more informal level as a means of brand building. It also may reach the people who cannot be reached through traditional media outlets.

Even with the calculated risk inherit to viral marketing, a good product or service coupled with a smart marketing campaign is hard to deny, even for the cynical and savvy Web consumer.

Business-speak calls it having deliverables. You can call it marketing done right.

   - Rob Lombardi is a copywriter at Mission Creative in Dubuque, Iowa.