Lost is back, and I’m pretty happy about it.  There are several of us in the office who watch, and each week we come into the office stammering and yammering about the latest developments.  Even if you don’t watch Lost, there’s no denying it’s a powerful mystery that has millions wondering every week where the next twist or turn will occur. 

It’s as good an excuse as any to talk about viral marketing.  Viral marketing is any marketing attempt where the fans themselves are the marketers–where the message spreads like a virus.  Usually it’s a video or a website that people are just compelled to forward to each other through email.  You may have heard about some of the viral marketing efforts for The Dark Knight (which claimed that the Joker had his own website at WhySoSerious.com–a site that has now added a black ribbon memorial for actor Heath Ledger) or Cloverfield (which featured a number of puzzle-related sites such as the Ethan Haas Was Right game). 

But no one does it better than Lost.  There have been countless online games, books, side mysteries, and other online content that feeds the underlying mystery of the show.  Back in the show’s first season, the fictional airline (Oceanic Air) had its own website, where you could click around and fiddle with the book-a-flight interface to unlock other secrets of the story.  That site currently has an alert message that All Flights Are Cancelled–in keeping with the mythology of the show. 

If you follow Lost, you now know that some of the survivors of flight 815 make it off the island.  And there appear to have been six of them total–hence the question “Who are the Oceanic 6?”  We don’t know how or why they get off the island, as we’re only getting flash-forward vignettes that give us hints. 

We do know that Jack, Kate, and Hurley are three of the six.  So the question becomes…”Who are the other 3 of the Oceanic 6?” 

We’re competing here in the office with a small pool, where each of us has guesses at which survivors will make it off the island.  My money?  It’s on Sayid, Sun, and Claire.  I think Sayid will make it off the island, simply because he doesn’t trust Locke.  The other two I’m picking because one is pregnant, and the other just had a baby.  Seems like a new child is as good a reason as any to get off that island. 

Just a guess, obviously.  And yeah, if you don’t watch the show, you’ve either stopped reading already or I’m beginning to seriously bore you. 

The point is this:  Lost is the viral marketing champ, and that’s evidenced by fans everywhere (including us here in the office) obsessively drawing up scenarios, discussing mysteries, and following the online clues.  The show’s mythology even has its own Wikipedia page, separate from the main Lost entry!  Every season of the show sees the produers upping the ante in terms of hype and mystery.  And the big viral push this year is “Who are the Oceanic 6?”  The billboard pictured above was photographed in Florida the week before this year’s premiere.  Think about that… part of Lost’s viral marketing campaign involves real-world, old-school-advertising in the form of a bill board.  Because they knew some obsessive fan would take a picture of it and put it online and the furor would begin.  Lost has come to point in its life where the episodes themselves are viral marketing efforts, as the producers put so many tiny clues and hints and references in the background that fan-sites have cropped up all over the place to post screenshots and pour over the details looking for clues. 

Listen, viral marketing is not just for the big guys anymore.  Sure, they own the market…they may have perfected it.  But viral marketing is a phrase that sort of first got its name back in the days of the Blair Witch Project, where producers counted on folks who thought the footage of the film was real passing the word of the film to their friends via email.  The little guys are the ones who started this whole thing.  And “viral marketing” can be as simple as a fun post on your company blog or website that you try and get folks to link to.  If you’ve heard of social bookmarking sites like Digg, Reddit, or Mixx, then you should know that these sites are full of content that is essentially linkbait. 

 ”Linkbait” is a form of viral marketing where content with mass appeal is created and then submitted to social networking sites like the ones mentioned above.  Stories that make the home page on Digg have been known to receive tens of thousands of site visitors in a day’s time–often crashing the server of the target site.  And stories that make the home page also generally lead to a bunch of new links to that site across the web–and links are terribly valuable in terms of search engine placement.  Here’s a quote from this excellent summary article on the benefits of linkbait:

While there are many factors that search engines use to determine how they will rank a web page - one of the most powerful elements is how many links point to it. Search Engines treat incoming links to your site like votes - (I’m over simplifying here) the more votes you get the more they’ll see others as valuing your page.

So let me give you an example:  You run a football blog.  Let’s say you just love football and the NFL and you write about it on your personal website.  And maybe your regular, every day content is a summary of the week’s games and predictions for the next week’s match-ups.  A good viral campaign for you would maybe be to create a list of some football-related thing….say “The Top 10 Most Amazing Super Bowl Comebacks Ever” (which would be a timely list, no?) and you write a little synopsis for each game.  Then, with a little luck, it gets picked up by Digg on the home page and your little football blog gets thousands of hits and a hundred links.  Within days you’re ranking #1 on Google for a ton of football-related queries and your once-little blog now has hundreds of subscribers. That’s how linkbait works.

That’s the hope, anyway.  Viral marketing is definitely a hit or miss endeavor.  There’s no way to know what content will set the web on fire.  But that hasn’t stopped companies far and wide from trying. 

We have a few clients trying some very clever viral marketing ideas, some smaller than others, some more successful than others.  Developing and implementing viral marketing and linkbait campaigns is a bit of a new service for us–heck, it’s new for everybody–but we’re having a blast helping out sites that want to reach a huge audience quickly, or develop a strong group of devoted followers.  If you think we might be able to infuse your online marketing efforts with a little extra zing, give us a shout and let’s talk about it. 

Or we can just talk about Lost and who you think the other 3 members of the Oceanic 6 might be.  Perhaps an even better question to ask would be “Who aren’t the Oceanic 6?”  Either way, it’s fun to talk about, isn’t it?