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The success of the potato salad Kickstarter campaign is a real head-scratcher.[/caption] ICYMI: a kid from Ohio set up a campaign on Kicktstarter with a simple, if slightly off-beat, premise: he wanted to make a
potato salad, and asked Kickstarter backers for $10 to do so. Since then, the campaign has gone viral, and as of this writing, he has raised $38,894 from 3,603 backers. That's enough money to pay for a year at Harvard, or for luxury car, or to rent a cottage in San Diego for 2.5 years. Has your head exploded yet? While this does seem like another ridiculous Internet phenomenon, there are some lessons that you can take away from the potato salad Kickstarter and apply (albeit loosely) to your marketing strategy.
1. The Internet Rewards Bravery
Depending on your perspective, you may think that the creator of this campaign is silly or wasting a lot of people's time and money. However if you take a look at the comments section on his Kickstarter page, you will notice that it is peppered with words like "brave" and "daring" and "bold." (Alternate lesson: the Internet has a low threshold for "daring.") The takeaway here is that you can't be afraid to take a chance on a weird idea.
2. People Want Tangible Rewards
Many people have criticized this campaign and the people who are donating to it. After all, there are tons of people using crowd funding sites who need money for things like medical bills, a new car, or artistic projects that they are passionate about. While it's deeply rewarding on an emotional level to help a cash-strapped family cover Dad's hospital bills, that's not a tangible reward. The potato salad campaign offers a spate of tangible rewards, from "I love potato salad" hats to a potato salad party. There's a reason MPR always offers coffee mugs and mouse pads during its pledge drives: becoming a member and supporting public radio is a great cause, but the reward isn't tangible. Tossing in the free coffee mug adds a palpable reward. The takeaway: when you can, offer something tangible.
3. Benign/Goofy/Random > Serious/Important
The more random, the better. This fact is as old as the Internet. The potato salad Kickstarter is random, ridiculous and funny, whereas some of the more serious crowd funding campaigns tilt toward depressing. People will choose funny over depressing more often than not. The takeaway: there are times when it is not appropriate to deviate from a serious tone, but if and when you can, add a more humorous spin to a campaign. You will catch more attention with laughter than with tears.
4. Copycats Fall Flat
A GoFundMe campaign is asking for money to create a "Chik Fil A" pizza. I seriously doubt it will raise as much as the potato salad campaign has. After all, the idea is old hat now. The obvious takeaway is that you should never blatantly appropriate another person's idea.
5. Going Viral Comes Down to Luck
I don't think anyone could have predicted that the potato salad Kickstarter would garner close to $40,000. If the creator had set out to raise that much money, there's no doubt he would have failed. So how do you explain it? Serendipity?
Publicity? The lemming-like mentality of people online? Certainly all of those things play a role to one extent or another. The bottom line is, if we knew the formula for what makes something go viral, everything we create would go viral.
Final Thoughts
Whether you think the potato salad Kickstarter campaign hilarious and inspiring or silly and wasteful, it provides us with a microcosm of the online world that can help us better understand how the Internet works and how to succeed in it.
