“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.“(Wilson,2012)

Viral marketing is not a new term, it was established in 1996 by Knight who referred to the term as the encompass of  messages or content being spread via social media like a raging virus.(Botha, Reyneke.2013) When initially created marketing managers were not aware of how this phenomenon would take over their future marketing activities.

With the decline of traditional advertising techniques, marketeers are now trying to captivate a some what fragmented audience that has risen with the proliferation of digital communication channels (Chen,2014) The medium used for viral campaigns is the internet often on social media sites, this therefore allows for brands not to be bound by geographic location and have the potential to reach a global amount of consumers in a short time period. (Botha,Reyneke. 2013)

It is also stated that viral marketing has benefits over traditional methods such as; cost effectiveness and ability to integrate with niche audience segments (Dobele et al, 2005)

Viral campaigns are therefore an invaluable tool for brands to reach and find new ways of engaging with existing and non-existing consumers.

Sharing content online is now an integral aspect of modern day life (Berger, Milkman. 2012), whether it be a funny Youtube video to your mate or a discount code for a meal to your partner. It is safe to say viral marketing is a strategy that is here to stay and which can only evolve with technology. However , even though this strategy has been adopted for some time, current academic literature still lacks in what contributes to the success of a viral campaign.

A brief analysis of the current literature will now be undertaken to help you suss out if your campaign has the viral factor!

Its Getting Emotional!

A clear factor that is prominent in all research carried out is that a consumers emotional connection with the campaign will have a determining effect towards whether or not they will share it. (Botha,Reyneke. 2013) Campaigns that arouse positive, upbeat emotions such as joy and being inspired tend to be popular for sharing purposes. Berger & Milkman (2012) suggested that this could be that consumers share content for self-presentation purposes, thus more positive content reflects more positively on the sender. On the other hand – campaigns that inflict negative emotions such as anger and disappointment are also popular for sharing.

This suggests that when trying to make a campaign go viral try to emotionally connect to your target audience, social media is about sharing how you feel. Once one member of your target audience shares it is likely that their friends/followers will be responsive to the same emotions, as Lee et al (2009) discovered in their study that the degree of similarity between consumers on social networks was a determinant of viral diffusion.

The above diagram is a decision tree by Botha & Reyneke (2013) showing the engagement between content and the resulting emotions that would therefore affect sharing or not.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjJQBjWYDTs&feature=youtu.be

Always (2014) released the #LikeAGirl campaign which was a great success and virally trended! It played upon feminism and gender equality to emotionally empower woman, Always recognised its targets audiences emotions including young women and their mums. Its touching and emotional and a great way of getting people talking about a topic which most people like to keep quiet about!

Stay Relevant

Sometimes crazy, creative videos go viral even if they have nothing to do with the brand or product available. However, this tends to lead to consumers only remembering the video and completely forgetting and quite frankly ignoring who made it. Berger and Milkman (2012) discussed that the practicality of the campaign and the relevance to the consumers need of gaining information is an important quality for a viral campaign to have.

Old Spice (2010) advert went viral due to the fact that it was relevant, directly addressing women consumers to buy the product for their man, who turned out made more than half of their men’s body wash customer base (Borowska,2014). The advert communicated in a charismatic manner to its consumers why they need to buy this product.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfxB5ut-KTs

Evian (2013) released this great ad which went viral for its unique and extremely creative methods. Originally i thought why the use of babies? But of course, the Evian slogan is “Live Young”, therefore making great connotation with the use of the baby reflections. It is also not the first campaign Evian used babies for, their have been two prior released campaigns, one in 1998 and 2009.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ekr05T9Iaio

Another great success story with the #DancePonyDance campaign from Three (2013), for me this is an advert which went viral for the right reasons, its extremely creative, amusing and makes good use of a catchy song. However, personally i dont think it has any relevance to do with the mobile phone company Three or what its trying to sell. When trying to recall who the hell made this campaign i couldn’t get past a phone company?? Proving that the advert may be remember-able but who created it will become irrelevant.

So to finish, it can be shown that connecting with your consumers emotions its a great way to ensure that consumers will engage with your campaign, engagement over social media is all you need for your target market to get sharing for you then to reach a much broader demographic! Trying to keep it relevant for the consumers and easily understandable on what is trying to be sold will help, however get creative and place a catchy soundtrack and that will definitely help!

References

Berger, J. and Milkman, K. (2012). What makes online content viral?. Journal of Marketing Research, 49(2), pp.192–205.

Botha,E. Reyneke,M. (2013). To share or not to share: the role of content and emotion in viral marketing. Journal of public affairs. 13 (2), 160-171

Borowska,P. (2014). What Can Old Spice Teach Us About Effective Marketing?. Available: http://www.creativeguerrillamarketing.com/viral-marketing/can-old-spice-teach-us-effective-marketing/. Last accessed 09/4/15.

Chen,T. (2014). Why do we share?. Journal of advertising research. 10 (4), 292-304.

Dobele, A.,Toleman,D, and Beverland,M. (2005) Controlled Infection! Spreading the Brand Message through Viral Marketing. Business Horizons, 48 (3) 143-149.

Lee, J. Lee,H and Lee,D. (2009) Impacts of Tie Characteristics on Online Viral Diffusion.Communications of the Association for Information Systems 24 (7) 545-556.

Wilson,R. (2012). The Six Simple Principles of Viral Marketing.Available: http://webmarketingtoday.com/articles/viral-principles/. Last accessed 02/04/15.