What makes something popular?

What does make something popular? There are, I suspect, thousands of answers to that question.

Where the hell it Matt has become very popular. It’s a bloke, who dances really badly in all sorts of places. I’m sure that if I wrote that on a piece of paper and went to an advertising agency they would have a little chuckle to themselves and show me the exit; but they would have been wrong. Clearly one advertising agency thought it was a good enough idea to pay someone to do it.

As someone involved in large scale IT projects I am interested in this kind of thing, because we have always struggled to get end users engaged in changes to their IT. I’m not talking here about the few ‘experts’ in an organisation, I’m talking about engaging with the masses. In most instances the changes we are planning to make will have a significant impact on a persons ability to do their job. Changes are normally regarded as a problem rather than something exciting to get engaged with.

I’ve seen all sorts of corporate communication techniques used, but none of them have really resulted in a general interest across the user base. That is, until we come along and change it.