Making meaning #2: VIRAL MARKETING
Just like a virus spreads by copying itself and jumping from host to host, so viral marketing relies on the receiver of the marketing message to pass on the information to other consumers.
Some great examples of viral marketing include Google, which had almost no marketing budget initially and relied on its users to spread the word. Twitter is another example, and shows how word of mouth support can take a product from the early adopter phase and into the mainstream (even Oprah tweets nowadays!)
You also get examples where the marketing campaign itself (as opposed to the actual product or service) becomes viral, either on purpose such as Nando’s adverts, or accidently, such as Ogilvy’s History Channel ads.
This is a marketer’s holy grail, as the customers do their work for them, and also give the marketing message added credibility. Think about it, do you trust a smirking salesman more than your next-door neighbour or colleague who has no financial interest in telling you about the product or service?
Viral marketing is really just a form of word of mouth endorsement – which is as old as when the first hunter-gatherer told his buddy that the antelope hang out on the other side of the hill and he better head that way if he wants to eat today.
However, thanks to the Internet and specifically the rise of social media and platforms such as YouTube, MySpace, Facebook and so on, word of mouth had just been given super powers, and viral campaigns have the ability to spread to millions of people around the world. Likewise, when things go wrong, they will go spectacularly and publicly wrong.
In my opinion some of the best viral campaigns happen spontaneously, thanks to a combination of humour, timeliness, ease of passing on and intrinsic value. Seeding, or deliberately setting up, a viral campaign needs to be handled carefully by marketers, and usually involves “infecting” super nodes of opinion and influence in the hope that the message spreads.
Essential reading: Seth Godin’s blog
