This “viral phenomenon” also known as guerilla marketing, viral marketing or word of mouth marketing is not really a new phenomenon, but it does use modern tools. The idea is that a “marketer” can cheaply and effectively disseminate their “product” using non-traditional media (e.g. blogs, social networking sites, tweets, emails, SMS messages etc.) either in conjunction with more traditional advertising methods or often only using these nontraditional methods.
An early predecessor to modern viral marketing might be considred the famous Superbowl commercial Apple computers used to launch their new Apple Macintosh line. Apple seems to were begining to understand the concepts of viral marketing even from this early date, and it has become one of their standard methods of marketing.
An early predecessor to modern viral marketing might be considred the famous Superbowl commercial Apple computers used to launch their new Apple Macintosh line. Apple seems to were begining to understand the concepts of viral marketing even from this early date, and it has become one of their standard methods of marketing.
Macintosh Superbowl 1984 commercial (Youtube)
Viral Marketing techniques began to be first applied and studied in the early 1990’s. Douglas Rushkoff wrote in his book Media Virus! talks of reaching “susceptible” potential users, and “infecting” them with the idea. This user then shares these ideas with friends, thus spreading the idea. He implied that the rate of this idea spreading is akin to the epidemiology of an organic virus. Orson Scott Card in his 1994 book Enders Game predicts the impact of such viral techniques, when the characters Valentine and Peter Wiggan (as children!) use very similar unconventional techniques to shape the course of world history.
One of the best known early examples of successful viral marketing was The Blair Witch Project which was a low budget ($500,000 - $750,000 (US)) (Young, 2009) managed to compete potential box office behemoths like Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace and The Wild Wild West starring Will Smith. The movie was one of the first to turn to the Web using the jumpy hand held video that set the mood of the movie.
Blair Witch Project trailer (YouTube)
More recently (2007) World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) used a viral marketing campaign to hype up the return of Canadian Super Star Chris Jerico, using short videos (which appeared "mysteriously" on the in arena screen ) rendered in Matrix style binary code with links that were, referring to various biblical passages about Jericho. This campaign was also spread over the web, on various websites and discussion fora to spread the hype.
Viral Marketers use many techniques in hopes of make an "instant" connection, and perhaps give them a sense of community. The marketer also has had to spend some time in identifying their target audience. Some of these techniques include:
· Key word search optimization allowing a web search to return the organizations product near the top (if not at the top) of the first page of the search.
· Use of social networking media such as Linkedin, Facebook or to a lesser extent MySpace.
· Rapid updating services like Twitter or SMS and VMS services, run by sophisticated “artificially intelligent” programs to appear to be a real person.
· Blogs.
Guerrilla marketing has begun to even influence how job seekers market themselves. With the increasingly competitive and cut throat job market, authors like Levinson and Perry advocate using viral techniques to market yourself, as it might give you an edge that other conventional methods will not, showing that society is beginning to accept these techniques as something expected.
One of the most successful viral campaigns of modern times is the campaign to become the next President of the United States by Barak Obama. The Obama camp utilized many of the tools listed, to both raise money (through small donations as well as sizable), and spread their message to as many voters as possible.
This approach was so successful it spawned a spoof campaign (The Obama Joker) and a some what punitive retaliatory campaign calling into question the authenticity of Barak Obama's campaign, claiming he was not a natural born citizen, this movement commonly called the "Birthers", who have utilized many of the same tools President Obama did to gain election.
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