Viral marketing refers to marketing techniques that utilise social networking platforms to so spread their message, ultimately increasing brand awareness. Knight (1999), as cited in Danilo & Fill (2008), suggests that viral marketing is a similar to a “digitalised sneeze”, one characterised by the release of “millions of tiny particles that can infect others who come into contact with them”.

Viral video advertisements can be extremely cost-efficient. Dollar Shave Club were a start-up business, spending a measly 4500 dollars on a video campaign starring their own CEO. 48 hours later and 12,000 consumers had signed up to their razor delivery service (Pullen, 2012). Their unofficial “Our Blades Are F**king Great” slogan, combined with the timely humour that evidently appealed to most, earned them a whopping 19 million views to this day. That’s pretty smooth going (pardon the pun).

Source: YouTube (2015)

Impressive right? It’s basically free, why doesn’t every business do it? Well, that’s not quite the whole picture. Viral marketing seldom happens by accident anymore, in fact it’s quite the contrary. It’s a deliberate marketing action, which can involve high costs. According to Zwilling (2011), these days you might need a brand evangelist team, content developer, and the cost of seeding viral activity (which has increased as the concept of viral marketing has become pervasive). And still, after all of that spending there is no guarantee it will be well received (Ferguson, 2008).

This is not to say that viral marketing doesn’t have excellent returns if done correctly. Which leads me on to my next point of discussion, how do you measure the success of a viral campaign? According to Bazadonna (2006) as cited in Danilo & Fill (2008), the current practice of measuring the success of campaigns is based on factors such as “hits” and “shares”, but this doesn’t necessarily mean the consumer is buying the product or service promoted.

As part of their rebrand to attract the younger market, Old Spice produced the ‘Swagger’ campaign, a comical introduction to ‘the man your man could smell like’.

Source: YouTube(2015)

This advert is hilarious, very clever and visually appealing, I’ve watched it twice just doing my research for this blog, and I’ve shared it in the past. But am I going to go out and buy old spice? Very unlikely. I’ve definitely contributed to the views despite not contributing to the revenue of the company. So how successful is this campaign for actually gaining revenue? Old Spice saw an increase of sales by 107% following this campaign (Griner, 2010), so apparently it’s quite effective after all. Helm (2000) suggests that the target of viral marketers is to maximise reach, in order to achieve competitive advantage. Not everyone who sees the ad will buy the product, but increasing the number of people seeing the ad increases the chance of consumers purchasing the product, and voila…Sales.

So how do you make your content go viral?

Allocate budget – To boost the chance of your video going viral, invest in social media algorithms and seeding on the top sites. Invest in influencers with big followers to share the content, if it’s retweeted by one user, their connections will see it at no extra cost to you.

Emotional appeal – According to Botha & Reyneke (2013), video campaigns without emotion are less likely to be shared. Therefore, to make your content go viral, it should provoke happiness, laughter, sadness or even fear. Just make your audience feel something! If we look at the Old Spice and Dollar Shave Club examples, both were pretty hilarious, and things people would want to share to make their friends and family a laugh too. Another excellent example is the “ship my pants” campaign by Kmart.

Source: Adapted from YouTube (2015)

Be original – Content that surprises the viewer is the most shared Berger & Milkman (2012). A video that is completely unusual and unexpected will spread like wildfire, let’s take the example of TNT’s viral campaign (my personal favourite). In this video, innocent people walking through Belgium find a big red button with a sign encouraging them to push the button for drama. Upon the button being pushed, a fantastic display of drama and stunts takes place right there, and we watch the unsuspecting victim squirm. This excellent idea generated an increase of 63% in the unique visits on tnt-tv.nl (Duval Guillaume, 2015).

Source: YouTube (2015)

Avoid being offensive – As with all campaigns, when you are trying to do something shocking, humorous and original it can often go too far. The sequel to Mountain-Dew’s ‘previously successful Felicia the Goat’ commercial angered the public after being accused of racism and downplaying violence. As a result the advert had to be taken off all channels and formal apologies made (Stampler, 2013).

Source: YouTube (2015)

Be relatable – Consumers have to find an affiliation with the content in order to share it with others (Botha & Reyneke, 2013), A good example of this is the ‘If London Were Syria’ campaign by the charity, Save the Children. The video depicts a second a day video, demonstrating the life of a young girl in London, if the UK were to descend into civil war similar to that of Syria. The video made the cause more relatable and led to a 1000% increase in the Save the Children YouTube subscriptions (Don’t Panic, 2015).

Source: YouTube (2015)

Encourage engagement – Extend your ad campaign to social media and mobile app competitions and games to broaden the reach. Evian’s Baby & Me ad campaign was hugely successful, and from this they launched the mobile app which enabled users to ‘baby-fy’ their photo. Users can then share their image on social media using the hashtag #EVIANBABYANDME (Miller, 2013).

Source: Miller (2013)

Have the right level of promotion – Portray your brand’s image, without overly promoting. The ad needs to get a relevant message across without the brand being the focus of the video. Conversely, don’t ignore your offering altogether or else you will leave people thinking what a great video, with absolutely no idea what it is selling or promoting. If we take the example of the viral campaign conducted for the film Limitless, in which there was a clip of a man hacking the Times Square video screens using an iPhone transmitter following ingestion of an ‘NZT’ drug. No one knew whether the video was real or fake, and it generated almost 4 million views. This would be impressive if the sequel ad, which revealed the film it was promoting, had more than 500 thousand views… That’s 3.5million people who still have no idea what that initial ad was about (Koelsch, 2011). Not such an effective campaign after all.

Source: YouTube (2015)

In summary, viral marketing efforts do not always provide a guaranteed return. But a well‐positioned, calculated and emotion-provoking campaign can generate the buzz and excitement online that positions the brand for years. Quantifying viral campaigns still remains difficult, but there is no doubt the excellent brand awareness returns contribute to the overall success of the business.

References

Berger, J. & Milkman, K.L. (2012) What Makes Online Content Viral? Journal of Marketing Research. Vol. 49, No. 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. Vol. 13, No. 2, pp160-171

Danilo, C. & Fill, C. (2008) Evaluating viral marketing: isolating the key criteria. Marketing Intelligence & Planning. Vol. 26, No. 7, pp 743-758

Don’t Panic (2015) Most Shocking Second-a-Day Video [Online] <http://bit.ly/1lzF4cx> [accessed 23^rd April 2015]

Duval Guillaume (2015) TNT – We know drama [Online] <http://bit.ly/1HDXohk> [accessed 23^rd April 2015]

Ferguson, R. (2008) Word of mouth and viral marketing: taking the temperature of the hottest trends in marketing. Journal of Consumer Marketing. Vol. 25, No. 3, pp.179-182

Griner, D. (2010) ‘Hey Old Spice haters, sales are up 107%’ Adweek, 27th July 2010 [Online] < http://bit.ly/1qBb4i0> [accessed 23^rd April 2015]

Koelsch, D. (2011) ‘Times Square Video Hack Turns Out To Be Viral For ‘Limitless’ [Online] < http://bit.ly/1IWVfw0> [accessed 23^rd April 2015]

Miller, J. (2013) ‘Unleash Your Inner Baby With Evian’s Baby And Me App’ Co Create, 31^st Mar 2013 [Online] <http://bit.ly/1Fmn5mk> [accessed 23^rd April 2015]

Pullen, J.P. (2012) ‘How a Dollar Shave Club’s Ad Went Viral’ Entrepreneur, 13^th October 2012 [Online] <http://entm.ag/1lCSrrm> [accessed 23^rd April 2015]

Stampler, L. (2013) ‘Mountain Dew-Loving Goat Intimidates Assault Victim Out Of Snitching’ Business Insider, 2^nd May 2013 [Online] <http://read.bi/1b1tBCi> [accessed 23^rd April 2015]

Zwilling, M. (2011) ‘Startups, Check Your Budget For Viral Marketing’ Business Insider, 21^st March 2011 [Online] <http://read.bi/1HE6KeL> accessed 23^rd April 2015