Viral and Vital. In recent years, the concept of “viral marketing” has arisen to systematize the age-old concept of word-of-mouth advertising. The idea is that a product proliferates by people “spreading the word.” It is called “viral” because it can cause the product to spread like a virus, or “infect” its market.

     Interest in viral marketing is a typical example of how bad news sells. The important dynamic behind the concept—generational reproduction yielding exponential growth—is not nearly unique to viruses, but is the fundamental characteristic of all of life. The growth of an individual from a zygote by mitosis is as dramatic an example of exponential growth as any viral infection there ever was—and a much better model for a business to emulate. Let other companies model themselves after viruses. We can model growth on the miracle of life itself.

     Genes. The magic of mitosis takes place by the self-replication of special molecules, called “genes.” In vital marketing, a company grows by another kind of self-replication. Information about the company and its products moves out into the marketplace through customer experience as well as the company’s advertising and public relations efforts. Once in the marketplace, messages containing this information may whither and die or they may be communicated from person to person and take on a life of their own. These messages are what we call, in vital marketing, “market genes.” They are the self-replicating genes that provide the growth force for a company.^«

     Self-replication is the essential characteristic that we focus on in vital marketing because it is the foundation of exponential growth. To understand this, think about the difference between a seed and a gene in biology. Both seeds and genes are basic elements of life whose proliferation brings about the growth of a species. But the important difference is that for a seed to reproduce itself, it must first build an entire, mature organism, which will then produce more seeds. A gene, on the other hand, reproduces itself directly. That’s why gene populations grow much more quickly than populations of seeds.

     Vitality. Biological genes, as far as we know, strive for nothing more than proliferation. But interesting effects result from that striving. The multiplication of the genes in a rosebud results in the growth of a beautiful flower that can feed honeybees and decorate a garden. Similarly, the proliferation of market genes creates effects in the marketplace, such as sales of a product, which are the reasons for launching the genes in the first place.

     The ability of a gene to replicate and spread copies of itself is called “fertility.” In addition, we will speak of the ability of a gene to create desirable effects on its environment, such as nectar for honeybees or sales of a product, as its “impact.” It is the combination of fertility and impact that make the mark of a gene on the world. The more fertile and the more impactful a gene is, the more important it is. We call the combination of fertility and impact “vitality.”

^«In The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins introduced the concept of self-replicating ideas and called them “memes.” In that language, the market genes we are discussing here are memes. A large field of academic study, called “memetics,” has grown around this concept. It is the subject of hundreds of books, articles, and Web sites, as well as a peer-reviewed academic e-journal.