Viral Marketing

Imagine the bewilderment created by the video which shows the Torro Rosso’s F1 car being dropped by helicopter into a ski slope and then raced. The team was sponsored by energy drink Red Bull. According to Allen St John, a popular writer on sports and entertainment does not win races or get noticed on performance but it generates fun and excitement enough to get noticed otherwise. That’s what the marketers ultimately want.

Some of the other emotional stealers in viral space are ALS ice bucket challenge evoking sympathy, Panda cheese commercials that generated curiosity mixed with astonishment or the Girl Leads Man Around World video creating utter envy. The emotional drive of any viral campaign should be strong enough to succeed in grabbing attention.

The success of Hotmail was in giving the service free. Free email services, free software, free mobile apps that will pay off in the long run. Free services attract more interest among users and will be shared extensively. Free services can use their reach to develop advertising opportunities and e-commerce opportunities. The trick is in generating interest in readers. The Hotmail started it all with the classic ‘Get your private, free email at http://www.hotmail.com’.

When a firm is seen as a responsible corporate citizen that adds to brand value.
ALS Ice Bucket Challenge that went viral set a new trend in charities and using online celebrities to strike it rich. It was one of the biggest viral campaigns ever. The campaign urged people to dump a bucket full of ice water on themselves, take its video and tag friend s to join in. The campaign succeeded in raising $100 mn for the ALS Association. It attracted the interest of globally-renowned people like Mark Zuckerburg, Martha Stewart, Justin Timberlake, Oprah, Bill Gates who all poured a bucket of ice water on themselves and posted videos. Challenged App is now available for companies to create similar challenges, create a video and post it.

It may not sound surprising to hear from viral marketing techniques experts that more challenge-wise viral campaigns are set to be launched thanks to the availability of apps for the purpose.

What if you create a video that is engaging, interesting or funny and it gets shared? Where does your brand benefit? The classic example was the ‘ReTweet to Feed a Hungry Child’ campaign of Kellog’s UK. The Twitter message hardly contained 140 characters and despite being popular for its charitable activities, the tweet didn’t succeed in creating a wave. Those who didn’t know of its charity activities saw it as an attempt to set up a viral marketing campaign that held the hunger of children hostage. Kellog’s attempt miserably failed and they had to apologize. The company tried to push a brand message without informing the audience what the message was all about.
The tweet read: “RT to help promote the our#GiveaChildbreakfast campaign. Click the link to learn how we help those in need: URL of the website” Here the failure was attributed to the lack of a message and focusing on the vital part of it. There should be a strong brand message, the viral part will take off on its own with a bit of push.

When we analyze the success stories in viral marketing, it is evident they have a message as in Katy Perry videos. It was a simple one- buy my album. Without a strong brand message, whatever effort is taken to push the video through social media and other platforms would backfire.

Another example of a viral marketing technique failure is the Evian Roller Babies campaign which was meant to promote Evian water. The video was widely watched and having crossed 70 million views. The message was that those who consume Evian water could feel as young and energetic as those babies. Those who saw the videos couldn’t connect with the Evian brand.

If videos are sort in real-life situations and the public asked to respond to a situation or question or the response of the audience shown are all perfect examples of using reality to succeed in viral marketing techniques. South Africa’s Funniest Home Videos are perfect examples of using real life settings to go viral. Successful campaigns also involve people reacting to imagined situations. TNT’ Drama Button campaign shocked people on the streets and people loved to see the reactions taking it to a viral intensity.

From the foregoing discussion, it is evident that all viral marketing techniques did not succeed because they failed to adhere to some of the basic principles outlined above. But there are several campaigns worth recalling that had varied success in the market place. Social media is the popular medium through which viral campaigns spread across the globe, gets shared and discussed. Hence it makes sense to invest some time, effort and money into Facebook, Google +, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other popular social media sites.