Viral Marketing
Definitions:
1. 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.
2. Type of marketing that infects its consumers with an advertising message, which
passes from one consumer to the next like a rampant flu” virus.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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 launch1.
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
1
Dobele, A et al. (2005), Controlled Infection! Spreading the Brand Message Through Viral
Marketing, Business Horizons, Vol. 48, pp.143-149.
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:
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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 attentiongetting 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:
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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.