Are you participating in the Fast Company’s Influence Project yet? Launched just 26 days ago, it already has 21,784 people registered, and the number is growing quickly.

The slogan of the campaign is “You’re more influential than you think”. The project’s website clarifies the idea:

ABOUT THE PROJECT

We started with a simple question: Who are the most influential people online right now?

That’s what The Influence Project is designed to answer. By participating, you will have your picture appear in the November issue of Fast Company magazine as part of an amazing photo spread. The more influence you demonstrate, the bigger your picture will be.

You may discover that you’re more influential than you think.

I’ve added the underlining to the above text to underscore the idea, and the reward.

I’m not gonna go into the analysis of their definition of influence (a great topic for another post); but would rather like to turn to 3 points which I believe are making this campaign such a success.

I’ve come up with this abbreviation — CTV (no, it has nothing to do with Canada’s largest television network) — each letter in which stands for one of the 3 essential components of a successful online marketing campaign. The Influence Project has them all, and so do other great campaigns (marketing campaigns, in particular) we’ve seen in the past:

1. Concept — It’s gotta be an attractive from end to start: from the idea to the prize, and The Influence Project has got it all lined up beautifully
2. Technology — Back it up with a cool technology. It’s great if it’s innovative, but it, actually, doesn’t have to be. Innovative approaches to existing technologies also work well (remember the IKEA’s photo-tagging Facebook campaign?)
3. Viral nature — Last, but certainly not least, your campaign must have the viral element embedded into it. The good ol’ world-of-mouth still works wonderfully when the idea is truly contagious

Have I missed anything? I’d love to hear your thoughts too. Please post them below — in the “Comments” area.

A few days ago a Toronto-based affiliate marketer, Lorne Fade, has published an ad spending infograph based on Nielsen AdRelevance data. Among other things the infograph reflected the distribution of the top advertisers (by impressions and spend) on Facebook:

A day earlier IKEA published a video on how they are using Facebook by kidnapping the platform’s “most popular function” — that of tagging photos — and getting people to spread the word about IKEA’s products via “via profile pages, the newsfeed, and links”. Why would people tag products, thereby spreading the word? Because whoever tagged a product on a showroom picture first, won it! More about simple, yet ingenious marketing move, in the video itself:

Within just one week, this video has been watched by over 37,000 viewers, while at the time of this post Gordon Gustavsson of IKEA has only 724 friends on Facebook. The friends of friends and other marketers are obviously watching.

Note that you will not find IKEA on the above-quoted list of the top Facebook spenders. Does this mean that their advertising on Facebook is less effective? Of course, not! The above example shows that thinking outside the box can at times be much more effective than pouring millions of dollars into your advertising.

In the past I have heard someone emphasize that to think “outside the box” you gotta first understand what’s in the box. IKEA took an already available idea/tool, and applied a truly outside-the-box thinking to transform it into a tool for viral marketing. Way to go, IKEA!