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Online Viral Marketing

Justin Kirby of DMC explores the business use and development of online viral marketing from a practitioner's point of view.

"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. Like viruses, such strategies take advantage of rapid multiplication to explode the message to thousands, to millions."

That’s the definition of viral marketing in theory, taken from ‘The Six Simple Principles of Viral Marketing’ by Dr. Ralph F. Wilson. But what about the hard reality of viral marketing in practice, particularly online? How have businesses used this technique to date? Is it developing into a crucial component of the marketing mix, or will its use wane as people try and fail to make it work?  

This article by Justin Kirby of Digital Media Communications explores the business use and development of online viral marketing from a practitioner’s point of view.

Early, high-profile adopters of the online viral marketing technique included Hotmail, who simply added a short line of promotional text to the bottom of every email message sent via their service. Within their first 18 months of business they claimed 12 million sign-ups to their service from a marketing spend of US$500,000 – an enviable cost per acquisition of 4 cents and a successful use of the viral technique.

Other early adopters included Budweiser and John West Salmon, both with digital video clips of TV ads that ‘escaped’ onto the web before they hit other media. The exclusivity and almost censored nature of the material attracted great interest among online users and resulted in a huge viral spread - with the catchphrase ‘Whassup’ used widely in the UK before the planned TV campaign hit, and the ‘never-meant-to-be-released’ John West Salmon ‘Bear’ ad becoming a classic of its kind, even spawning a follow-up ‘Shark’ ad last year.

However, these early successful uses of the viral technique were more ‘happy accidents’ than carefully planned campaigns. And replicating their kind of success has proved an elusive goal for marketers, many of whom as usual expected to mould the new technique neatly into existing marketing models.

To start with, the online viral technique was widely used by businesses as a standalone marketing tactic with the focus on the material itself. The material – examples of which can be seen regularly in the likes of the Lycos Viral Chart and Viralbank - included photoshopped images, online games, digital video clips and even text (jokes, anecdotes, excerpts from the Big Brother 3 transcripts). This tactical use of the technique was and is very hit and miss, and relies completely on the viral material alone striking a chord with users. The amount of mediocre viral material increased, creating a clutter that made it more difficult for campaigns to stand out above the crowd.

Some businesses then began to refine their use of the technique, realising that the viral ‘agent’ (the material component of a campaign) could be used as a means to an end, rather than simply an end in itself. Viral campaigns have now been used successfully to create a ‘buzz’ around a brand or product, as well as helping to shift the product.

For example, Eidos’ Hitman 2 online viral campaign in September 2002 helped shift a million units thanks to the buzz it generated, which was picked up in the Top 10 Movers of 2002 on the Yahoo! Buzz Index.

In a more recent example, the latest Diesel campaign (‘Oil Klash Klash’) is essentially a TV brand advertising campaign whose strategy has been to launch on the web first using a viral technique. This web-first launch may not seem like a big deal, but it’s a lot more significant than many would first imagine because, although there is a lot of (loose) talk about integration and 360, for the most part the web activity for any campaign is still very much seen as the poor relation and in all but a few cases is really only an afterthought - particularly from an ad campaign planning point of view.

With the maturing use of the viral technique, there seems to have been a shift to the web not just being seen by agencies and brands as another tick box for any ad campaign, which is significant enough, but now being the medium where a campaign is launched to create a buzz before it hits TV and print — even before cinema release which used to be seen as the pre-launch buzz-generation activity.

So businesses are starting to realise that using the online viral technique strategically and integrating it in the overall marcoms mix can be extremely beneficial in extending brand-building activity. For farsighted businesses, viral campaign planning has become part of the overall campaign planning process and now includes the development of a viral ‘theme’ for brand extension on the web. 

Let’s step back and look at what’s involved in creating a viral campaign these days.

No business can afford to maintain constant mainstream media brand awareness. Two of the most common uses and benefits of viral marketing are to maintain a cost-effective level of brand awareness during mainstream activity ‘downtime’, and to kickstart new marcoms activity. Online viral marketing can:

• Reach well beyond a business’ core target market
• Create buzz around products and brands
• Reinforce existing advertising and branding messages
• Extend other marcoms activities
• Provide accountability when tracked, thereby measuring and proving ROI

The planning stage of a viral campaign will set out objectives and develop the viral ‘theme’ for buzz generation. It can also help brands amortise media, PR and creative activity across a wider campaign. There are then three core components to any viral campaign:

Creative material: the viral agent that embodies the message you want to spread in a digital format (image, video, text, etc.).

Seeding: distributing and placing the agent online in places that provide the greatest potential spread

Tracking: Measuring the spread of the campaign to provide accountability and prove success

The viral agent is obviously extremely important. By its very nature, the viral technique works only as well as the people on the receiving end decide it should – they are the judge, jury and sometimes executioner of businesses’ viral campaigns.

There are three main viral audiences that need to be taken into account when creating viral material: web site owners and editors who are the core influencers online – they decide whether to accept and endorse material to their end users thereby helping to create a ‘buzz’; the end users themselves; and the wider offline Press who can pick up and help extend the buzz that is created.

One major difference in the online experience of viewing viral material is that it’s a proactive, not passive activity. Unlike watching TV ads, with viral material users choose to download, view and pass it on, thereby giving it peer-to-peer endorsement (the ultimate way of engaging your audience).

Another thing to bear in mind with viral material is that “This is a really cool video, it reminds me of my life to date” is quite a different user comment from “This is a really cool product, you should buy it.” In our experience, viral material from businesses should take the form of ‘advertainment’ rather than overt advertising if it is to appeal to viral audiences - the more 'tainment' than 'ad', the better. The Xbox ‘Champagne’ viral campaign (see www.dmc.co.uk/xboxresults), as well as the Diesel and Hitman 2 campaigns mentioned earlier, are good examples of this ‘advertainment’ approach in action.

Now to the seeding of an online viral campaign. Many businesses – and even our beloved new media trade press! – seem to think that viral = email. Fullstop. That all you do is send your material to a few email lists, or even your mates, and hey presto it’s off around the world in 80 hours. Sadly this is not an approach that can be relied upon.

The basic seeding model that businesses use is to set up a microsite or campaign web landing page, add a ‘forward to friend’ function to it and then spend money driving people to that location by paying for email lists, third-party web site banner ads, etc. This basic ‘drive to site’ approach can be expensive and is really just a rework of a standard online advertising model. Any viral element or effect relies mainly on the forward to friend function on the destination site where traffic and data gathering is tracked in order to garner a measure of success.

A wider seeding model is to set up direct viral material downloads or links on specialist viral third-party web sites in order to create awareness and spread before users get to the campaign destination site. The material is therefore taken to the users, rather than relying only on the users going to the landing site to find it. The viral effect with this seeding model occurs more widely in two online areas - although most companies cannot track the wider spread of the material.

As members of the viral community ourselves, and a practitioner with long-established editorial relationships, we advocate using the wider seeding process that takes the viral material to existing groups online: large dedicated viral networks, large professional portals that have a viral component, semi-professional viral specialist sites and small hobbyist sites. And don’t underestimate the power and influence of the smaller sites – their ‘insider’ advocacy can help create a greater buzz than that of the better-known viral sites.

In our experience, combining an advanced seeding and tracking process with a well-planned viral theme to create buzz accelerates the uptake of viral material, which is of course key to the success of any viral campaign.

In conclusion, while lessons have been learned, trends have developed and there is definitely some science involved in using the viral technique successfully in marketing campaigns, it would be foolish to claim that ‘one approach fits all’.

What we can say without doubt is that we believe the online viral technique is here to stay, and, if used strategically rather than simply tactically, it can make a significant difference to the success of wider marketing activity. Will more brands realise this and reap the benefits? That is the question.

 

About DMC

Digital Media Communications (DMC at www.dmc.co.uk) are the online viral and buzz marketing experts. They were founded in 1994 and have successfully completed over 500 online marcoms projects, including branding campaigns and tactical promotions for the likes of Baileys, Burger King, Ben & Jerry's, Coca Cola, Mitsubishi and Powergen.

Since 2000, they have specialised in online viral and buzz marketing for major brands, including Diesel, EA Sports, Eidos, Levi’s, Mates, Mazda, MTV, Sony Ericsson, Ubi Soft, Virgin and Xbox. Their services were used by two of Campaign’s 10 best viral campaigns of 2002: Xbox and MTV.