Viral marketing is harder than advertising

Viral phenomena are "objects or patterns able to replicate themselves or convert other objects into copies of themselves when these objects are exposed to them." But unfortunately the popularity of some internet memes sparks the ambition in some to "go viral" with their next campaign. Mostly because of all the bad reasons, like the illusion that "viral campaigns are cheaper".
In Redeye VC: Let's just add in a little virality Josh Kopelman defines virality as "something that has to be engineered from the beginning…and it’s harder to create virality than it is to create a good product. That's why we often see good products with poor virality, and poor products with good virality. The reason that over $150 Billion is spent on US advertising each year is because virality is so hard. If virality was easy, there would be no advertising industry."