Viral Marketing: Will You Come Down With It?

You actually might want to. Viral marketing is everywhere, and, when it “works,” it’s tough to argue with its success.

What is Viral Marketing?
According to Wikipedia, it’s “marketing techniques that use pre-existing social networks to produce increases in brand awareness, through self-replicating viral processes, analogous to the spread of pathological and computer viruses.”

WHEW! We prefer the simpler definition Ralph Wilson has come up with. According to him, “viral marketing describes any strategy that encourages individuals to pass on a marketing message to others, creating the potential for exponential growth in the message’s exposure and influence.”

Some Examples Thereof
Anybody remember Burger King’s “Subservient Chicken? Created by The Barbarian Group, it was a web site that featured an actor in a chicken costume who would perform a wide range of actions based on a user’s input. For example, users could instruct the chicken to “lay an egg,” “do the moonwalk,” “squat,” “do the YMCA,” walk like an Egyptian” or pretty much anything else. (The chicken would approach the camera and shake its finger at the user for the really disgusting requests.) The pre-recorded footage made the site seem like an interactive webcam. What was the point? To literally interpret Burger King’s ad slogan, “Get chicken just the way you like it.” How successful was it? Within a day after being released, the site had a million hits. Within a week, it had received 20 million hits. A year later, the site had had about 14 million unique visitors and had received 396 million hits. Ahh, but did it sell chicken sandwiches, you ask? Yes, with sales increases in the double-digits.

There are lots more recent examples of corporate viral marketing, too. Visit YouTube to see Ford Motor Company’s “Kia Evil Twin” campaign, or Heinz’s “Ketchup Against Tomato Cruelty.” And here’s a link to a recent short film developed for Kodak by a Rochester agency. Within days it had been viewed, "favorited", and passed around by hundreds of thousands online – getting the attention of the trades and the national news – all without a dollar spent on purchased media.

Elements of a Viral Marketing Strategy
OK, you’re convinced. Viral marketing is the way to go. What do you need to build into it (besides us) for it to work? According to Ralph Wilson, some or all of the following:

• Products or services that are given away
• A media that allows for effortless transfer to others
• Something that can scale from very small to very large easily
• An idea that exploits common motivations and behaviors
• The utilization of existing communication networks
• The resources of others

Want to know more? Watch for the next issue of E-Whiz. Or contact Sally for a copy of Wilson’s article, “The Six Simple Principles of Viral Marketing.”