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Viral signs

'Can you make it go viral?' is a phrase that strikes fear into the hearts of all agency folk. But Swedish PR consultant Simon Strand, who has spent an inordinate amount of time philosophising on last year's big YouTube hits and coming up with his own viral formula, is here to help. 

The last year has seen two global YouTube phenomena rise above all others:  Gangnam Style and Harlem Shake.

Reasonably, we find the formula for the next major Youtube hit by looking for the common denominators of these two previous hits.

So what are the common denominators?

Gangnam and Harlem are both neighborhoods in different global cities: Seoul and New York City.

Gangnam and Harlem both ends with the letter 'm'.

Style and Shake are both words of five letters.

Style and Shake both begin with "s".

Style and Shake both ends with "e".

Style and Shake are both nouns.

Gangnam Style and Harlem Shake both contains strange dance elements.

Gangnam Style and Harlem Shake both contains hip hop influenced music.

Gangnam and Harlem begins with letters that come after each other in the alphabet: ‘G’ and ‘H’.

Consequently, the next global YouTube phenomenon will also be a two-word concept where the first word is the name of a neighborhood in a global metropolis.

The name of the neighborhood probably begins with an I – which comes after G(angnam) and H(arlem) in the alphabet and, of course, ends with an m. The second word should be a five-syllable noun beginning with s and ending with e. Maybe "smile"? Or “shame”? Just guessing.

Add some hip hop influences and strange dances, and there is only a matter of time before you got your 1.6 billion views.

Imagine how easy things can be sometimes.

Aren’t they?

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