Viral Marketing

Definitions:

A communication and distribution concept that relies on consumers to transmit digital products via electronic mail to other potential consumers in their social sphere and to animate these contacts to also transmit the products.

Type of marketing that infects its consumers with an advertising message, which passes from one consumer to the next like a rampant flu” virus.

True viral marketing differs from word-of-mouth in that the value of the virus to the original consumer is directly related to the number of other users it attracts.

The tactics of creating a process where interested people can market to each other—is therefore emerging as an important means to spread-the-word and stimulate the trial, adoption, and use of products and services.

Any positive or negative statement made by potential, actual, or former consumers about a product or company, which is made available to a multitude of people and institutions via the Internet.

Intro:

Marketers have given this phenomenon several names; besides viral marketing and buzz, there is also breaching the tipping point and convergence marketing, all of which refer to a very specific type of word-of-mouth communication about a brand or product that leads to explosive self-generating demand—or ruin.

Central to the success of these campaigns is one or more of the following: their entry timing (early), their visibility, or the simplicity of the idea. The Honda Cog example broke a complex idea into a simple engaging one: each car component forming part of an elaborate domino-type setup. Another example is Hotmail, which attached a clickable URL to every outbound message sent by a user. The result was that every customer became the vehicle through which other potential customers found out about the service. Not only did potential customers become aware of the company, but the receipt of a Hotmail email also provided a simple and immediate opportunity to access the service. Through this form of marketing, Hotmail went from 0 to 12 million customers globally in 18 months; a staggering launch[1].

Offline Viral Marketing

The challenge with viral and word of mouth marketing offline is getting the initial ball rolling, and more importantly, sustaining the viral marketing offline. The key to beginning and sustaining an offline viral marketing campaign is to have your brand attached to an item that is hot, trendy, exciting, not particular to one group of individuals, and most importantly has the ability to create and oohhhh and ahhhhhhh affect when the recipient experiences this item. The offline world has the constraint of geography, so the least expensive forms of viral marketing are going to be geographically bound, which can be challenging for some sites. Some argue that offline marketing is a waste of time for most sites or blogs. However, every site should practice some form of offline viral promotion. These efforts are called "drive to web programs" and they can be very successful. There are two important pieces to all promotion, and they become even more important in promoting your site offline. Just like the online world, your success at offline promotion is going to hinge on putting your message in front of the prospect in the right context – meaning at the right time and when they are in the right mood to perform the action you are looking for, which in this case is a visit to your website. Two elements are needed for each viral marketing idea – the hook and the context. Once you figure out how you’re going to do it, you need to determine where you’re going to do it. If the niche and scope of your business won’t lend itself well to local leads, passing out business cards isn’t going to work as a viral marketing idea. Every site could benefit from offline leads – it’s just a matter of time and money. So here are seven ideas with an explanation of hook and context for each:

¨   Use your URL like your phone number. Wherever there is a phone number there should be both a URL and contact email address that is generic: press releases, yellow page ads, newspaper advertising, radio and TV ads, company vehicles, brochures, sell sheets, the bottom of every page of your catalog. Context: Global, because all of your marketing materials travel all over the place.

¨   Webcards. You can get business cards pretty cheap these days. Choose an attention-getting color that fits with the image of your site. Context: More locally focused, because you are handing them out. 

¨   Make every customer contact a viral marketing opportunity. paper clipping a couple of the webcards to an invoice or statement or other correspondence with a small postit note personally written by you asking them to keep one of the cards and give the other one to someone who might be able to use it. Context: Sort of a viral marketing meets chain letter idea that has potential. Global in scope.

¨   Referral Bribes. Offer your current customers an incentive to refer new customers. Maybe it’s a coupon for a percentage off their next order, or an entry into a prize raffle or something else of value. This encourages people to tell you who referred them so you can see who’s helping you out. Context: Global if you combine offline with online.

¨   Tchochkes. Tchochkes [choch-kez] are little gifts (knick knacks) emblazoned with your URL that you give out to people. The webcard could actually be considered a tchochke, but they usually are stuff we have on our desk or around our house like paperweights, coffee cups, T-Shirts, refrigerator magnets and other stuff. Context: Global depending on where you send them.

¨   Direct Mail with a personalized offer. There are (snail mail) mailing lists for everything. Use a well designed, neat, personalized letter with a personalized URL (an easy one), and send them off to redeem their offer. Context: Global.

¨   The World as Your Billboard. figure out how to get your URL in front of as many people as you can locally. Creative and unique wins the day. Posters, yard signs, billboards, bumper stickers, pens and pencils, and car window signs. Think about it and come up with something good. Context: Local.

Examples:

¨   Half success: One example is that of an electronic form Sony Ericsson used for the launch of its T68i mobile telephone with camera. Sony Ericsson spent $5 million on a campaign that, in part, used 120 actors who frequented popular tourist locations or fashionable bars and nightclubs in New York. The actors would identify people from the desired target segment, approach them, and ask them to take their pictures, with the objective of the campaign being getting the product into the hands of potential customers, having them experience its ease of use, and encouraging them to ask questions about it. Despite tactical success, Sony Ericsson was criticized by consumer groups on the ethics of the campaign, since the actors did not identify themselves as paid representatives of the company.

¨   Success: Honda UK: Revitalizing the brand through viral marketing: The result of the creative effort was an ad known as bThe CogQ that featured hundreds of individual pieces of a new Honda Accord connecting with each other as though they were a big tumbling domino display. The ad was initially launched on UK television at the first commercial break of the Brazilian Formula 1 Grand Prix. The ad ran the full 2-min length allotment, and wherever Formula 1 fans gathered to watch the event in the UK, brought the room to a standstill. Coinciding with the television launch, the bcreativeQ was also made available on the Honda website, where those fascinated by it could download it to watch over and over. Such was the amount of interest that many shared the ad with friends and began emailing it around the world. Thus began the viral marketing campaign of The Honda Cog. In using viral marketing as part of the message delivery, Honda was able to spread its message further than traditional media would allow within the UK. The result? In the UK, Honda attributed record-breaking sales in the first quarter of 2004 in part to the dramatic increase in brand awareness from The Cog ad.

¨   Success: Pepsi used a successful viral marketing approach to connect the right target segment with its brand. In 2001, Pepsi became a key sponsor of the inaugural Soul Beach Music Festival in Miami, Florida. Traditionally, sponsorship relies on the placement of the sponsor’s logo on posters, tickets, T-shirts, and signs at various events. Pepsi took a different direction: it developed a campaign in which patrons at the festival had their photographs taken and were then given a DigiCard that contained a range of multimedia, including a screensaver, video, audio, and self-contained email software. The DigiCard was both a reminder of the photograph taken and a vehicle that led participants to the Pepsi site to collect their photographs. For Pepsi, the value of the Soul Beach sponsorship was the ability to link its brand directly to an exciting event and the personal experiences of thousands of participants who then emailed their photographs (and the Pepsi brand) to friends and family around the corner or around the world.

Failures: Viral Marketing is a tricky thing, and like fire and government it is powerful servant but a fearful master. While companies scramble to “go viral” and produce the next overnight web sensation, the road is fraught with danger and the gutter littered with epic fails.

Failure Examples:

¨   The most famous (and ridiculous) recent example of viral marketing FAILs is the Great Boston Bomb Scare of 2007 ™. In an attempt to create hype around its upcoming movie, advertisers behind Aqua Teen Hunger Force paid some weird dudes to hang sticky LED signs all over the city. The city freaked out, thinking they were bombs and shut everything down, arrested the kids and fined Cartoon Network a whole bunch of money. But at least now it has its own Wikipedia page.

¨   Ashanti Death Threats: Failing R&B singer Ashanti thought it would be a good idea to promote her new album by launching a viral marketing campaign that allowed people to send their friends death threats. Yes you read that right, death threats.

¨   Chevy’s Create Your Own Tahoe Commercial: Chevy created a user generated advertising platform for a campaign for the Tahoe. Things went wrong when users started making ads critical of the big car maker’s fuel efficiency and environmental friendliness. Commercials typically included stuff like this: Hey, 2,325 U.S. kids have died, 16,653 have been injured, and up to $2 trillion will be spent to keep our oil supply safe. If you support the troops you’ll get out there and use some of it! Chevy Tahoe: Don’t let all that blood go to waste.™

¨   Virgin’s B3ta Competition: Virgin started a contest on the popular designer website for users to create images of what would happen if you said yes to everything. What Virgin ended up getting was a bunch of offensive pictures of Richard Branson. The guys behind the site had this to say about it all: “Yep, they pulled the challenge. Yep, they were told before they opened it exactly how it would play out. Yep, they asked us to delete it. Yep, I think the whole thing is funny.”

¨   Starbucks Free Iced Coffee: Sometimes the campaign doesn’t have to fail to turn against its creators, sometimes it just has to work too well, like Starbuck’s free iced coffee for friends and family efforts. The coffee chain sought to entice friends and family of employees to come into the store for free iced coffee, but when word got out about the offer and the respones was bigger than expected, corporate headquarters nixed the promotion.

¨   Dove & Axe Mashup: Unilever’s success with socially responsible Dove viral ads found resistance when a Youtube user made a mashup of the Dove ads and some of Unilever’s Axe commercials, which many consider sexist. Axe ads were used to show how on one hand the company objectifies women, while on the other, it pretends to care about the daughters of America.

¨   Working Families for Wal-Mart: As if Sony’s epic fail didn’t teach the PR world enough, Walmart hired firm Edelman who created an astrotuff blog allegedly written by average working families to counteract the bad public image the mega chain has suffered from for years. When the blog was outed as a fake it further damaged Walmart (and Edelman’s) shaky reputation.

Online Viral marketing examples:

Scope mouthwash, for example, designed a customized animated kiss that was electronically mailed to its current customers to tie in with the promotional slogan that Scope brings people kissably close. The customers could forward the e-kiss to family and friends, with tracking technology revealing that most of them did so.

The De Beers website allowed visitors the opportunity to design their own rings and then forward the designs on to friends or family. The site was so compelling that visitors wanted to share it with others.

When Procter and Gamble launched its new shampoo, Physique, online, visitors who referred the website ad to 10 friends won a travel-sized styling spray and were entered into a competition to win a year’s supply of shampoo. This promotion generated two million referrals and made the Physique launch the most successful new shampoo launch in the United States.

A prime example of Internet word-of-mouth referrals or viral marketing is The Blair Witch Project, released in 2001. Although the movie lacked a sizable promotional or marketing budget, interest in its storyline was generated through online marketing under the premise that the movie depicted the true story of three student filmmakers who disappeared somewhere in the Maryland woods while attempting to film their own story of the Blair Witch and whose missing footage was found 1 year later. To support the truthfulness claim, the movie’s creators provided a website with evidence from the case, including sheriff’s reports, photographs, and details of the Blair Witch. Other supporting documentation included a comic book and chat sites incorporated in the 12-month lead-up to the movie’s launch. A friend of someone who worked in the industry allegedly copied previews of the movie that were posted on the Web prior to the film’s release. Before the movie even opened, it had inspired more than 20 fan sites, a mailing list, an online chat room, and positive reviews on a number of review sites including Ain’t It Cool News. All this viral hype helped develop the $30,000 film into a $150 million blockbuster.

Hotmail - When Hotmail launched, much of its early success was due to the virality of the sigline that it attached to every outgoing email inviting the recipient to join. One of the earliest examples of viral marketing on the internet.

Subservient Chicken - the creepy webcam site made for a Burger King campaign allowed people to control a guy in a chicken suit. It went viral almost instantly and for a few weeks was everywhere.

Will it Blend - One of the most recent best viral marketing campaign examples, Blendtec’s will it blend video series shows scientists testing if various household items will blend in their super-powerful blender. This campaign leveraged the popularity of online video sharing sites.

One Red Paperclip - This was a blog where the author started with a single red paperclip and traded his way up to a house, documenting his steps along the way.

Million Dollar Homepage - Perhaps the most famous viral marketing “why didn’t I think of that” example, this site sold pixels on its homepage and eventually made over a million dollars.

Simpsonsize Yourself - Created for the Simpsons movie, this site allowed visitors to create an avatar of themselves as a character from the cartoon.

Mentos/Diet Coke - Another wacky scientist schtick, these guys got famous by making art out of the explosions caused by mixing diet coke and mentos. Mentos handled it beautifully, Coke did not.

Dove Evolution Video - Part of a campaign by Dove, this video showed how models’ beauty is often artificial, and really struck a chord with its intended audience of female viewers.

Tea Partay - A beverage company created this video as a parody of rap videos and used preppy white kids.

Youtube Embedable Videos - Youtube’s meteoric rise is due in large part to the embeddable videos the company introduced, allowing bloggers to put videos directly into posts.

Lonelygirl15 - This fake reality show featured an aspiring actress, playing strange storyline. It generated lots of views and eventually the creators were unmasked.

Bob Dylan Facebook App - This application allows users to make their own version of Dylan’s Subterranean Homesick Blues video. This is a viral marketing campaign example consisting entirely of “brand” interaction for the purpose of entertainment.

[1] Dobele, A et al. (2005), Controlled Infection! Spreading the Brand Message Through Viral Marketing, Business Horizons, Vol. 48, pp.143-149