RMM

Leo recently posted about the idea of bought, owned and earned media - a nice way to frame digital media i’m sure you’ll agree. I’ve been thinking about this and how it applies to viral content.After the jump; my thoughts in glorious technicolour (I even mention Paris Hilton…)

Often brands think of viral content as bought media but it isn’t: it’s earned media. There is no such thing as ‘out-of-the-box’ viral content. All one can hope to do is seed content and hope it ‘goes viral’. That is to say; if the content is good enough it earns the right to virality by virtue of the fact that an audience think the content is good , so good that they feel compelled to share it with their friends (and their friends are similarly compelled and their friends also and so on…). To this end one has to accept that content, once it has been made appropriately open and sharable (as per KUDOS) and seeded, is no longer owned media. Or rather, it is owned media until the content ‘goes viral’ at which point it belongs to the web.

On a very serious note, this has been a problem of increasing significance amongst teenagers (especially those at lower end of the spectrum) recently. I recently read this article by Ashleigh Banfield which looks at the dangers of ‘Sexting’ the practice of sending ’sexy’ (often naked or compromising) pictures of oneself to an object of one’s affection. At the time it is exciting and titilating, however, as is often the way with young love it burns bright and short and in the aftermath of a messy break-up scorned lovers have forcibly made these images viral by sending them to their entire address book in an attempt to hurt their former partner. In one sad case this has lead to a teenage girls suicide. Whilst it wasn’t the viral picture of the girl so much as the associated bullying as a result of the image that led to this unfortunate outcome it does highlight the dangers of losing ownership of your media and in the same way viral content can be earned positively, it can swing the other way and end in some pretty serious consequences. The Guardian’s Charles Arthur has written a nice peice about the forgotten permanence of viral media here.

Interestingly, one person to have overcome the full force of virality is non other than Paris Hilton. ‘One night in Paris’ (no I will not be hyperlink to it) earned viral status in no time when it got leaked to the net. However, Hilton, after lengthy court procedures, now owns the rights to what was once a viral video. It appears then that viral content can become owned content (provided you’ve got enough legal firepower). Sharp-suited lawyers aside, I think the lesson here is that sometimes rather than trying to gag and hide negative viral content that might damage a person/brand it is better to embrace it and in some way regain ownership of the content. A kind of digital equivalent of ‘if you can’t beat them, join them’.

I hope that what these two examples demonstrate is that there is a lot to think about when it comes to viral media. The first and most important thing to remember is that vira contentl isn’t owned, but it is earned and whilst it can’t be bought it can be embraced.