Viral Marketing - Ricardian

Viral marketing is a term that I’m sure many people are not too sure about, viral marketing is a phenomenon which facilitates and encourages people to pass along a marketing message through word of mouth or through another social medium. Viral marketing first started to become a more viable marketing tool in the 1990s.

 You are probably exposed to viral marketing everyday without even realising it. In order for viral marketing to work efficiently, the medium that carries your marketing message must be easy to transfer and replicate. One of the best examples of this is the viral marketing campaign created by the Hotmail email service. Hotmail advertise that you can get an email account for free with them and without you knowing at the end of every email that you send they attach "Get your private, free email at http://www.hotmail.com". This is their job done because they can now rely on you to advertise Hotmail every time that you send an email, which will result in more people getting Hotmail email accounts.

 The most recent use of viral marketing is the “Kony 2012” video, which was uploaded onto YouTube on the 5^th of March 2012. “Kony 2012” was uploaded by Jason Russell with the intention of around twenty thousand people actually watching the video. However, this video has already amassed more than eighty seven and a half million views, which is a phenomenal achievement in such a short space of time. However, unlike a lot of viral marketing campaigns before “Kony 2012” such as “Ronaldinho: Touch of Gold (Nike)”, “Kony 2012” was more than just a video. During the video, the main message about Joseph Kony - the Ugandan warlord - was put across to everyone watching the video, but we were also told about how we could order the “Kony 2012” action packs, which includes a T-shirt, a bracelet, stickers, posters, a button and an action guide. If people wear the t shirt and bracelet or put up the posters up then the message from the video is being spread even further, without the person who came up with the idea having to spend more money since the packs cost money to buy, but their message is still being put across to more people. “Kony 2012” took viral marketing to a whole new level because the marketing did not stop there, because another event called “Paint the Night” has been set up, where people will cover towns and cities all over the world ranging from London to Sydney with posters of Joseph Kony in order to spread the message further. However, Jason Russell could not possibly organise “Paint the Night” all over the world, so he left it up to the people watching the video to set up the events and make a group. However, the marketing campaign was not finished there, after the “Kony 2012” video, Jason Russell appeared on news shows all over the world so that he could spread his message more. Albeit that the enthusiasm for “Kony 2012” has now died down with most people, this is still an excellent example of how viral marketing can be used to get a message across very quickly, without the cost of advertising between television shows because it costs very little or nothing to put something onto the internet.

Viral marketing has been made a lot easier with the internet becoming more and more a part of everyday life for a lot of people. Another excellent example of viral marketing is when Threshers leaked a forty percent off voucher on the internet in 2006. This would have been very successful no matter when it was released during the year, however, it was released just before Christmas, which put it in even more demand. The voucher spread through social media website, blogs and email, this shows how prominent social media websites are becoming with regard to viral marketing. Threshers obviously underestimated the effects that viral marketing can have, soon after the voucher had been released a company spokesperson said “It was never intended to get this big”. The people behind “Kony 2012” realised the potential that viral marketing has and made sure that they made the most of it by learning from previous campaigns.

By looking at these few examples, it is safe to say that viral marketing can be a very powerful and effective marketing tool because it can allow the scale of the audience to increase very quickly with very little effort from the person who started the campaign. However, for a viral marketing campaign to be successful there needs to be something that people can gain from it and it must be easy for people to pass on the message to other people via other mediums such as social networking websites. Due to the success that a lot of viral marketing campaigns have had I do not think it will be long before more companies use viral marketing in order to advertise their products or services.