As a magic trick that entertains an audience by creating illusions of seemingly impossible actions, I believe that a viral video uses the same idea of the three stages of a magic trick: The Pledge, The Turn and The Prestige.

The Pledge: Here is when something ordinary is introduced to the audience. Normally it can take most of the time in the viral video. It can be seen as simple story telling that induces the audience to a given mind set that will have continuation in the next stages.

The Turn: The second part of the viral video is where the spotlight attention of the audience is switched to something of particular interest. At this moment, the audience already has some background information (given in the previous stage) and now their total attention is in this particular issue, where they necessary will feel curious and anxious of what’s going to happen next.

The Prestige: As expected, this is the glorious part of the viral video, where the audience start laughing, if it’s a comic ending, or feel shocked if it’s a dramatic ending. The point made is that the illusion created over the last stages ends here, in this so-called emotional stage. This last stage itself doesn’t need to be that spectacular, but due to the story telling presented to the audience and the curiosity generated by them, a good prestige will just blow your mind, and make you share it with all your friends.

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As it is known in the advertising sphere, the unique selling proposition (USP) is indeed the most important issue that the agency and the client want the viewers to remember after they’ve seen/heard the advertisement. In the early fifties, Rosser Reeves developed this concept at TED Bates advertising agency. The idea of USP was that every single brand had something that could distinguish them from their competitors. Hence, this powerful unique element could be easily turned into the added value of the campaign.

This idea came about 70 years ago. I think it’s about time to rephrased it according to the new age of viral video marketing.

As well know the future of online video advertising is already here, and we should learn from the past in order to take the best advantages from the tools we get the opportunity to use in the future. UPS is one of them.

In my opinion, the spread of viral videos have two reasons of happening
1) The fact of being funny, engaging and letting the consumers identify with it.
2) The fact of being mysterious.

(Check this post by Seth Godin to understand more about how spread happens in social media)

If we understand these two reasons of why viral videos spread, it’s clear to understand that the UPS does not make much sense in this new context. We don’t want the viral video to distinguish from its competitors in its core content. What we want is in the prestige (final part of the viral video) the UPS being finally presented to the consumer, creating an illusion of what actually the video was for.

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