Viral marketing
Encyclopedia
Viral marketing, viral advertising, or marketing buzz are buzzword
s referring to marketing
techniques that use pre-existing social network
s to produce increases in brand awareness
or to achieve other marketing objectives (such as product sales) through self-replicating viral
processes, analogous to the spread of virus
es or computer viruses. It can be delivered by word of mouth
or enhanced by the network effects of the Internet
. Viral marketing may take the form of video clip
s, interactive Flash games, advergames, ebooks, brandable software
, image
s, or text messages
.
The ultimate goal of marketers interested in creating successful viral marketing programs is to create viral messages
that appeal to individuals with high social networking potential
(SNP) and that have a high probability of being presented and spread by these individuals and their competitors in their communications with others in a short period of time.
The term "viral marketing" has also been used pejorative
ly to refer to stealth marketing campaigns—the unscrupulous use of astroturfing
online combined with undermarket advertising in shopping centers to create the impression of spontaneous word of mouth
enthusiasm.
graduate Tim Draper and faculty member Jeffrey Rayport
.
The term was later popularized by Rayport in the 1996 Fast Company
article "The Virus of Marketing," and Tim Draper and Steve Jurvetson
of the venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson
in 1997 to describe Hotmail
's practice of appending advertising to outgoing mail from their users.
Among the first to write about viral marketing on the Internet was the media critic Douglas Rushkoff
. The assumption is that if such an advertisement reaches a "susceptible" user, that user becomes "infected" (i.e., accepts the idea) and shares the idea with others "infecting them," in the viral analogy's terms. As long as each infected user shares the idea with more than one susceptible user on average (i.e., the basic reproductive rate is greater than one—the standard in epidemiology
for qualifying something as an epidemic
), the number of infected users grows according to an exponential curve
. Of course, the marketing campaign may be successful even if the message spreads more slowly, if this user-to-user sharing is sustained by other forms of marketing communications, such as public relations or advertising.
Bob Gerstley was among the first to write about algorithm
s designed to identify people with high Social Networking Potential. Gerstley employed SNP algorithms in quantitative marketing research. In 2004, the concept of the alpha user was coined to indicate that it had now become possible to identify the focal members of any viral campaign, the "hubs" who were most influential. Alpha users could be targeted for advertising purposes most accurately in mobile phone
networks, as mobile phones are so personal.
1. Messenger: Three specific types of messengers are required to ensure the transformation of an ordinary message into a viral one: market maven
s, social hubs, and salespeople. Market mavens are individuals who are continuously ‘on the pulse’ of things (information specialists); they are usually among the first to get exposed to the message and who transmit it to their immediate social network. Social hubs are people with an exceptionally large number of social connections; they often know hundreds of different people and have the ability to serve as connectors or bridges between different subcultures. Salespeople might be needed who receive the message from the market maven, amplify it by making it more relevant and persuasive, and then transmit it to the social hub for further distribution. Market mavens may not be particularly convincing in transmitting the information.
2. Message: Only messages that are both memorable and sufficiently interesting to be passed on to others have the potential to spur a viral marketing phenomenon. Making a message more memorable and interesting or simply more infectious, is often not a matter of major changes but minor adjustments.
3. Environment: The environment is crucial in the rise of successful viral marketing – small changes in the environment lead to huge results, and people are much more sensitive to environment. The timing and context of the campaign launch must be right.
Whereas Kaplan, Haenlein and others reduce the role of marketers to crafting the initial viral message and seeding it, futurist and sales and marketing analyst Marc Feldman, who conducted IMT Strategies’ landmark viral marketing study in 2001 , carves a different role for marketers which pushes the ‘art’ of viral marketing much closer to ‘science.’
Feldman points out that when marketers take a disciplined approach to viral marketing by targeting, measuring and continually optimizing their campaigns based on campaign metrics, viral marketing transforms the customer into a new sales channel, a new lead generation channel and a new awareness generating channel. Feldman's innovative reconceptualization of viral marketers went a long way towards making "viral marketing" a strategy that sales and marketing directors at Fortune 500 and Global 1000 companies could legitimately invest in. This disciplined approach to Viral Marketing that Feldman first carved out, pointed the way towards measuring the ROI of every viral marketing campaign and thus making a real business case for investing in viral marketing. The customer-as-a-sales-channel approach to viral marketing went on to become the foundation for an explosion of technology enabled viral marketing services offered online, offline and in blended hybrid approaches.
and related investment pyramid scheme
s are early examples of viral marketing. In each round, investors are paid interest from the principal deposits of later investors. Early investors enthusiastically recruit their friends, generating exponential growth until the pool of available investors is tapped out and the scheme collapses.
Early in its existence (perhaps between 1988 and 1992), the television show Mystery Science Theater 3000
had limited distribution. The producers encouraged viewers to make copies of the show on video tapes and give them to friends in order to expand viewership and increase demand for the fledgling Comedy Central
network. During this period the closing credits included the words "Keep circulating the tapes!"
In 2000, Slate.com described TiVo
's unpublicized gambit of giving free systems to web-savvy enthusiasts to create "viral" word of mouth, pointing out that a viral campaign differs from a publicity stunt
.
Both the second and third games in the Halo
series were preceded with viral marketing in the form of an alternate reality game
called I Love Bees for the second game, and Iris for the third game.
Burger King
has used several marketing campaigns. Its The Subservient Chicken
campaign, running from 2004 until 2007, was an example of viral or word-of-mouth marketing. Burger King's launched its "Whopper Sacrifice" campaign in 2009.
The Blendtec
viral video series Will It Blend?
debuted in 2006.. In the show, Tom Dickson, the Blendtec founder, attempts to blend various unusual items in order to show off the power of his blender. Will it Blend? has been nominated for the 2007 YouTube award for Best Series, winner of .Net Magazine's 2007 Viral Video campaign of the year and winner of the Bronze level Clio Award for Viral Video in 2008.
Cadbury's Dairy Milk 2007 Gorilla advertising campaign
was heavily popularised on YouTube
and Facebook
.
The 2007 concept album Year Zero
by Nine Inch Nails
employed a viral marketing campaign, including the band leaving USB drives at concerts during NIN's 2007 European Tour. This was followed up with an alternate reality game
using series of interlinked websites revealing clues and information about the dystopia
n future in which the album is set.
In 2007, World Wrestling Entertainment
promoted the return of Chris Jericho
with a viral marketing campaign using 15-second cryptic
binary code
videos. The videos contained hidden messages and biblical links related to Jericho, although speculation existed throughout WWE fans over whom the campaign targeted. The text "Save Us" and "2nd Coming" were most prominent in the videos. The campaign spread throughout the internet
with numerous websites, though no longer operational, featuring hidden messages and biblical links to further hint at Jericho's return.
In 2007, Portuguese football club Sporting Portugal integrated a viral feature in their campaign for season seats. In their website, a video required the user to input his name and phone number before playback started, which then featured the coach Paulo Bento
and the players waiting at the locker room while he makes a phone call to the user telling him that they just can't start the season until the user buys his season ticket. Flawless video and phone call synchronization and the fact that it was a totally new experience for the user led to nearly 200,000 pageviews phone calls in less than 24 hours.
The 2008 film Cloverfield
was first publicized with a teaser trailer
that did not advertise the film's title, only its release date: "01·18·08." Elements of the viral marketing campaign included MySpace
pages created for fictional characters and websites created for fictional companies alluded to in the film.
The Big Word Project
, launched in 2008, aimed to redefine the Oxford English Dictionary
by allowing people to submit their website as the definition of their chosen word. The project, created to fund two Masters students' educations, attracted the attention of bloggers worldwide, and was featured on Daring Fireball
and Wired Magazine
.
The marketing campaign for the 2008 film The Dark Knight
combined both online and real-life elements to make it resemble an alternate reality game
. Techniques included mass gatherings of Joker
fans, scavenger hunts around the world, detailed and intricate websites that let fans actually participate in "voting" for political offices in Gotham City, hidden phone numbers and websites in the queue lines of The Dark Knight roller coasters at Six Flags Great America and Six Flags Great Adventure, and even a Gotham News Network that has links to other Gotham pages such as Gotham Rail, a Gotham travel agency, and political candidate's pages. The movie also markets heavily off of word of mouth from the thousands of Batman fans.
Between December 2009 and March 2010 a series of seven videos were posted to YouTube under the name "iamamiwhoami
" leading to speculation that they were a marketing campaign for a musician. In March 2010, an anonymous package was sent to an MTV
journalist claiming to contain a code which if cracked would give the identity of the artist. The seventh video, entitled 'y', appears to feature the Swedish singer Jonna Lee
.
On July 14, 2010, Old Spice launched the fastest growing online viral video campaign ever, garnering 6.7 million views after 24 hours, ballooning over 23 million views after 36 hours. Old Spice's agency created a bathroom set in Portland, OR and had their TV commercial star, Isaiah Mustafa
, reply to 186 online comments and questions from websites like Twitter
, Facebook
, Reddit
, Digg
, Youtube
and others. The campaign ran for 3 days.
VMS target marketing is based on three important principles:
By applying these three important disciplines to an advertising model, a VMS company is able to match a client with their targeted customers at a cost effective advantage.
The Internet makes it possible for a campaign to go viral very fast. However,the Internet and in particular, social media technologies do not make a brand viral; they just enable people to tell other people faster. The Internet can, so to speak, make a brand famous overnight.
or blog
site weekly. 220+ million people visit the top 25 social networks each month. Facebook
has 500+ million active users. Time spent visiting Social media
sites now exceeds time spent emailing. 52% of people who find news online forward it on through social networks, email, or posts. 59% of adults polled state that they use their cell phone to remain connected with their social network.
Buzzword
A buzzword is a term of art, salesmanship, politics, or technical jargon that is used in the media and wider society outside of its originally narrow technical context....
s referring to marketing
Marketing
Marketing is the process used to determine what products or services may be of interest to customers, and the strategy to use in sales, communications and business development. It generates the strategy that underlies sales techniques, business communication, and business developments...
techniques that use pre-existing social network
Social network
A social network is a social structure made up of individuals called "nodes", which are tied by one or more specific types of interdependency, such as friendship, kinship, common interest, financial exchange, dislike, sexual relationships, or relationships of beliefs, knowledge or prestige.Social...
s to produce increases in brand awareness
Brand awareness
Brand awareness is a marketing concept that enables marketers to quantify levels and trends in consumer knowledge and awareness of a brand's existence...
or to achieve other marketing objectives (such as product sales) through self-replicating viral
Viral phenomenon
Viral phenomena are objects or patterns able to replicate themselves or convert other objects into copies of themselves when these objects are exposed to them....
processes, analogous to the spread of virus
Virus
A virus is a small infectious agent that can replicate only inside the living cells of organisms. Viruses infect all types of organisms, from animals and plants to bacteria and archaea...
es or computer viruses. It can be delivered by word of mouth
Word-of-mouth marketing
Word-of-mouth marketing , also called word of mouth advertising, is an unpaid form of promotion—oral or written—in which satisfied customers tell other people how much they like a business, product, service, or event...
or enhanced by the network effects of the Internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
. Viral marketing may take the form of video clip
Video clip
Video clips are short clips of video, usually part of a longer recording. The term is also more loosely used to mean any short video less than the length of a traditional television program.- On the Internet :...
s, interactive Flash games, advergames, ebooks, brandable software
Brandable software
Brandable software is typically software created by one company for the purpose of allowing other companies to obtain resell rights or giveaway rights to the software, change the brand associated with it, and sell it as if it were their own...
, image
Image
An image is an artifact, for example a two-dimensional picture, that has a similar appearance to some subject—usually a physical object or a person.-Characteristics:...
s, or text messages
SMS marketing
SMS Marketing is a relatively new type of mobile marketing that uses SMS text messaging as a medium of direct advertising, often to a firms existing customers. An SMS Marketing campaign involves collecting mobile phone numbers usually by customer opt-ins using a keyword sent to a short code, which...
.
The ultimate goal of marketers interested in creating successful viral marketing programs is to create viral messages
Viral messages
Viral Messages refer to marketing messages that are passed from person to person through their Social Networks. To create successful viral marketing messages, where success is defined as positive Return on Investment, marketers must:...
that appeal to individuals with high social networking potential
Social networking potential
Social networking potential is a numeric coefficient, derived through algorithms to represent both the size of an individual's social network and their ability to influence that network...
(SNP) and that have a high probability of being presented and spread by these individuals and their competitors in their communications with others in a short period of time.
The term "viral marketing" has also been used pejorative
Pejorative
Pejoratives , including name slurs, are words or grammatical forms that connote negativity and express contempt or distaste. A term can be regarded as pejorative in some social groups but not in others, e.g., hacker is a term used for computer criminals as well as quick and clever computer experts...
ly to refer to stealth marketing campaigns—the unscrupulous use of astroturfing
Astroturfing
Astroturfing is a form of advocacy in support of a political, organizational, or corporate agenda, designed to give the appearance of a "grassroots" movement. The goal of such campaigns is to disguise the efforts of a political and/or commercial entity as an independent public reaction to some...
online combined with undermarket advertising in shopping centers to create the impression of spontaneous word of mouth
Word of mouth
Word of mouth, or viva voce, is the passing of information from person to person by oral communication. Storytelling is the oldest form of word-of-mouth communication where one person tells others of something, whether a real event or something made up. Oral tradition is cultural material and...
enthusiasm.
History
There is debate on the origination and the popularization of the term viral marketing, though some of the earliest uses of the current term are attributed to the Harvard Business SchoolHarvard Business School
Harvard Business School is the graduate business school of Harvard University in Boston, Massachusetts, United States and is widely recognized as one of the top business schools in the world. The school offers the world's largest full-time MBA program, doctoral programs, and many executive...
graduate Tim Draper and faculty member Jeffrey Rayport
Jeffrey Rayport
Jeffrey F. Rayport is a consultant, author, and founder and chairman of Marketspace LLC, a strategic advisory practice that works with leading companies to reinvent how they interact with and relate to customers...
.
The term was later popularized by Rayport in the 1996 Fast Company
Fast Company (magazine)
Fast Company is a full-color business magazine that releases 10 issues per year and reports on topics including innovation, digital media, technology, change management, leadership, design, and social responsibility...
article "The Virus of Marketing," and Tim Draper and Steve Jurvetson
Steve Jurvetson
Steven T. "Steve" Jurvetson is a Managing Director of Draper Fisher Jurvetson . He was a Venture Capitalist investor in Hotmail, Interwoven, and Kana...
of the venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson
Draper Fisher Jurvetson
Draper Fisher Jurvetson is a venture capital firm based in Menlo Park, California with affiliate offices in more than 30 cities around the world and over $7 billion in capital commitments....
in 1997 to describe Hotmail
Hotmail
Windows Live Hotmail, formerly known as MSN Hotmail and commonly referred to simply as Hotmail, is a free web-based email service operated by Microsoft as part of its Windows Live group. It was founded by Sabeer Bhatia and Jack Smith and launched in July 1996 as "HoTMaiL". It was one of the first...
's practice of appending advertising to outgoing mail from their users.
Among the first to write about viral marketing on the Internet was the media critic Douglas Rushkoff
Douglas Rushkoff
Douglas Rushkoff is an American media theorist, writer, columnist, lecturer, graphic novelist and documentarian. He is best known for his association with the early cyberpunk culture, and his advocacy of open source solutions to social problems.Rushkoff is most frequently regarded as a media...
. The assumption is that if such an advertisement reaches a "susceptible" user, that user becomes "infected" (i.e., accepts the idea) and shares the idea with others "infecting them," in the viral analogy's terms. As long as each infected user shares the idea with more than one susceptible user on average (i.e., the basic reproductive rate is greater than one—the standard in epidemiology
Epidemiology
Epidemiology is the study of health-event, health-characteristic, or health-determinant patterns in a population. It is the cornerstone method of public health research, and helps inform policy decisions and evidence-based medicine by identifying risk factors for disease and targets for preventive...
for qualifying something as an epidemic
Epidemic
In epidemiology, an epidemic , occurs when new cases of a certain disease, in a given human population, and during a given period, substantially exceed what is expected based on recent experience...
), the number of infected users grows according to an exponential curve
Exponential function
In mathematics, the exponential function is the function ex, where e is the number such that the function ex is its own derivative. The exponential function is used to model a relationship in which a constant change in the independent variable gives the same proportional change In mathematics,...
. Of course, the marketing campaign may be successful even if the message spreads more slowly, if this user-to-user sharing is sustained by other forms of marketing communications, such as public relations or advertising.
Bob Gerstley was among the first to write about algorithm
Algorithm
In mathematics and computer science, an algorithm is an effective method expressed as a finite list of well-defined instructions for calculating a function. Algorithms are used for calculation, data processing, and automated reasoning...
s designed to identify people with high Social Networking Potential. Gerstley employed SNP algorithms in quantitative marketing research. In 2004, the concept of the alpha user was coined to indicate that it had now become possible to identify the focal members of any viral campaign, the "hubs" who were most influential. Alpha users could be targeted for advertising purposes most accurately in mobile phone
Mobile phone
A mobile phone is a device which can make and receive telephone calls over a radio link whilst moving around a wide geographic area. It does so by connecting to a cellular network provided by a mobile network operator...
networks, as mobile phones are so personal.
Functioning
According to marketing professors Andreas Kaplan and Michael Haenlein, to make viral marketing work, three basic criteria must be met, i.e., giving the right message to the right messengers in the right environment:1. Messenger: Three specific types of messengers are required to ensure the transformation of an ordinary message into a viral one: market maven
Maven
A maven is a trusted expert in a particular field, who seeks to pass knowledge on to others. The word maven comes from Hebrew, via Yiddish, and means one who understands, based on an accumulation of knowledge.-History:...
s, social hubs, and salespeople. Market mavens are individuals who are continuously ‘on the pulse’ of things (information specialists); they are usually among the first to get exposed to the message and who transmit it to their immediate social network. Social hubs are people with an exceptionally large number of social connections; they often know hundreds of different people and have the ability to serve as connectors or bridges between different subcultures. Salespeople might be needed who receive the message from the market maven, amplify it by making it more relevant and persuasive, and then transmit it to the social hub for further distribution. Market mavens may not be particularly convincing in transmitting the information.
2. Message: Only messages that are both memorable and sufficiently interesting to be passed on to others have the potential to spur a viral marketing phenomenon. Making a message more memorable and interesting or simply more infectious, is often not a matter of major changes but minor adjustments.
3. Environment: The environment is crucial in the rise of successful viral marketing – small changes in the environment lead to huge results, and people are much more sensitive to environment. The timing and context of the campaign launch must be right.
Whereas Kaplan, Haenlein and others reduce the role of marketers to crafting the initial viral message and seeding it, futurist and sales and marketing analyst Marc Feldman, who conducted IMT Strategies’ landmark viral marketing study in 2001 , carves a different role for marketers which pushes the ‘art’ of viral marketing much closer to ‘science.’
Feldman points out that when marketers take a disciplined approach to viral marketing by targeting, measuring and continually optimizing their campaigns based on campaign metrics, viral marketing transforms the customer into a new sales channel, a new lead generation channel and a new awareness generating channel. Feldman's innovative reconceptualization of viral marketers went a long way towards making "viral marketing" a strategy that sales and marketing directors at Fortune 500 and Global 1000 companies could legitimately invest in. This disciplined approach to Viral Marketing that Feldman first carved out, pointed the way towards measuring the ROI of every viral marketing campaign and thus making a real business case for investing in viral marketing. The customer-as-a-sales-channel approach to viral marketing went on to become the foundation for an explosion of technology enabled viral marketing services offered online, offline and in blended hybrid approaches.
Notable examples
The Ponzi schemePonzi scheme
A Ponzi scheme is a fraudulent investment operation that pays returns to its investors from their own money or the money paid by subsequent investors, rather than from any actual profit earned by the individual or organization running the operation...
and related investment pyramid scheme
Pyramid scheme
A pyramid scheme is a non-sustainable business model that involves promising participants payment or services, primarily for enrolling other people into the scheme, rather than supplying any real investment or sale of products or services to the public...
s are early examples of viral marketing. In each round, investors are paid interest from the principal deposits of later investors. Early investors enthusiastically recruit their friends, generating exponential growth until the pool of available investors is tapped out and the scheme collapses.
Early in its existence (perhaps between 1988 and 1992), the television show Mystery Science Theater 3000
Mystery Science Theater 3000
Mystery Science Theater 3000 is an American cult television comedy series created by Joel Hodgson and produced by Best Brains, Inc., that ran from 1988 to 1999....
had limited distribution. The producers encouraged viewers to make copies of the show on video tapes and give them to friends in order to expand viewership and increase demand for the fledgling Comedy Central
Comedy Central
Comedy Central is an American cable television and satellite television channel that carries comedy programming, both original and syndicated....
network. During this period the closing credits included the words "Keep circulating the tapes!"
In 2000, Slate.com described TiVo
TiVo
TiVo is a digital video recorder developed and marketed by TiVo, Inc. and introduced in 1999. TiVo provides an on-screen guide of scheduled broadcast programming television programs, whose features include "Season Pass" schedules which record every new episode of a series, and "WishList"...
's unpublicized gambit of giving free systems to web-savvy enthusiasts to create "viral" word of mouth, pointing out that a viral campaign differs from a publicity stunt
Publicity stunt
A publicity stunt is a planned event designed to attract the public's attention to the event's organizers or their cause. Publicity stunts can be professionally organized or set up by amateurs...
.
Both the second and third games in the Halo
Halo (series)
Halo is a multi-million dollar science fiction video game franchise created by Bungie and now managed by 343 Industries and owned by Microsoft Studios. The series centers on an interstellar war between humanity and a theocratic alliance of aliens known as the Covenant...
series were preceded with viral marketing in the form of an alternate reality game
Alternate reality game
An alternate reality game is an interactive narrative that uses the real world as a platform, often involving multiple media and game elements, to tell a story that may be affected by participants' ideas or actions....
called I Love Bees for the second game, and Iris for the third game.
Burger King
Burger King
Burger King, often abbreviated as BK, is a global chain of hamburger fast food restaurants headquartered in unincorporated Miami-Dade County, Florida, United States. The company began in 1953 as Insta-Burger King, a Jacksonville, Florida-based restaurant chain...
has used several marketing campaigns. Its The Subservient Chicken
The Subservient Chicken
The Subservient Chicken is an advertising program created to promote international fast food restaurant chain Burger King's TenderCrisp chicken sandwich and their "Have it Your Way" campaign...
campaign, running from 2004 until 2007, was an example of viral or word-of-mouth marketing. Burger King's launched its "Whopper Sacrifice" campaign in 2009.
The Blendtec
Blendtec
Blendtec is a company that sells professional and home blenders, with their key product being the Total Blender. It is a division of K-Tec...
viral video series Will It Blend?
Will It Blend?
Will It Blend? is a viral marketing campaign consisting of a series of infomercials demonstrating the Blendtec line of blenders, especially the Total Blender. In the show, Tom Dickson, the Blendtec founder, attempts to blend various unusual items in order to show off the power of his blender...
debuted in 2006.. In the show, Tom Dickson, the Blendtec founder, attempts to blend various unusual items in order to show off the power of his blender. Will it Blend? has been nominated for the 2007 YouTube award for Best Series, winner of .Net Magazine's 2007 Viral Video campaign of the year and winner of the Bronze level Clio Award for Viral Video in 2008.
Cadbury's Dairy Milk 2007 Gorilla advertising campaign
Gorilla (Cadbury)
Gorilla is a British advertising campaign launched by Cadbury Schweppes in 2007 to promote Cadbury Dairy Milk-brand chocolate. The 90-second television and cinema advertisement, which formed the centrepiece of the £6.2 million campaign, was created and directed by Juan Cabral and starred actor...
was heavily popularised on YouTube
YouTube
YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....
and Facebook
Facebook
Facebook is a social networking service and website launched in February 2004, operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. , Facebook has more than 800 million active users. Users must register before using the site, after which they may create a personal profile, add other users as...
.
The 2007 concept album Year Zero
Year Zero (album)
Year Zero is the fifth studio album by American industrial rock act Nine Inch Nails, released on April 17, 2007, by Interscope Records. Frontman Trent Reznor wrote the album's music and lyrics while touring in support of the group's previous release, With Teeth...
by Nine Inch Nails
Nine Inch Nails
Nine Inch Nails is an American industrial rock project, founded in 1988 by Trent Reznor in Cleveland, Ohio. As its main producer, singer, songwriter, and instrumentalist, Reznor is the only official member of Nine Inch Nails and remains solely responsible for its direction...
employed a viral marketing campaign, including the band leaving USB drives at concerts during NIN's 2007 European Tour. This was followed up with an alternate reality game
Alternate reality game
An alternate reality game is an interactive narrative that uses the real world as a platform, often involving multiple media and game elements, to tell a story that may be affected by participants' ideas or actions....
using series of interlinked websites revealing clues and information about the dystopia
Dystopia
A dystopia is the idea of a society in a repressive and controlled state, often under the guise of being utopian, as characterized in books like Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four...
n future in which the album is set.
In 2007, World Wrestling Entertainment
World Wrestling Entertainment
World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc. is an American publicly traded, privately controlled entertainment company dealing primarily in professional wrestling, with major revenue sources also coming from film, music, product licensing, and direct product sales...
promoted the return of Chris Jericho
Chris Jericho
Christopher Keith Irvine , better known by his ring name Chris Jericho, is an inactive Canadian-American professional wrestler, musician, songwriter, radio personality, television host, actor, author, and dancer...
with a viral marketing campaign using 15-second cryptic
Cryptic crossword
Cryptic crosswords are crossword puzzles in which each clue is a word puzzle in and of itself. Cryptic crosswords are particularly popular in the United Kingdom, where they originated, Ireland, the Netherlands, and in several Commonwealth nations, including Australia, Canada, India, Kenya, Malta,...
binary code
Binary code
A binary code is a way of representing text or computer processor instructions by the use of the binary number system's two-binary digits 0 and 1. This is accomplished by assigning a bit string to each particular symbol or instruction...
videos. The videos contained hidden messages and biblical links related to Jericho, although speculation existed throughout WWE fans over whom the campaign targeted. The text "Save Us" and "2nd Coming" were most prominent in the videos. The campaign spread throughout the internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
with numerous websites, though no longer operational, featuring hidden messages and biblical links to further hint at Jericho's return.
In 2007, Portuguese football club Sporting Portugal integrated a viral feature in their campaign for season seats. In their website, a video required the user to input his name and phone number before playback started, which then featured the coach Paulo Bento
Paulo Bento
Paulo Jorge Gomes Bento is a retired Portuguese footballer, and the current manager of Portugal.A defensive midfielder with tackling ability and workrate as his main assets, he played for two of the major three teams in his country, also playing four years in Spain...
and the players waiting at the locker room while he makes a phone call to the user telling him that they just can't start the season until the user buys his season ticket. Flawless video and phone call synchronization and the fact that it was a totally new experience for the user led to nearly 200,000 pageviews phone calls in less than 24 hours.
The 2008 film Cloverfield
Cloverfield
Cloverfield is a 2008 American disaster-monster film directed by Matt Reeves, produced by J. J. Abrams and written by Drew Goddard.The film follows six young New Yorkers attending a going-away party on the night that a gigantic monster attacks the city...
was first publicized with a teaser trailer
Teaser trailer
A teaser campaign is an advertising campaign which typically consists of a series of small, cryptic, challenging advertisements that anticipate a larger, full-blown campaign for a product launch or otherwise important event. These advertisements are called "teasers" or "teaser ads"...
that did not advertise the film's title, only its release date: "01·18·08." Elements of the viral marketing campaign included MySpace
MySpace
Myspace is a social networking service owned by Specific Media LLC and pop star Justin Timberlake. Myspace launched in August 2003 and is headquartered in Beverly Hills, California. In August 2011, Myspace had 33.1 million unique U.S. visitors....
pages created for fictional characters and websites created for fictional companies alluded to in the film.
The Big Word Project
The Big Word Project
The Big Word Project is a website created by Paddy Donnelly and Lee Munroe, two Masters students from the University of Ulster, Belfast, Northern Ireland. Launched on February 25, 2008, the project is aimed at redefining the English dictionary with websites...
, launched in 2008, aimed to redefine the Oxford English Dictionary
Oxford English Dictionary
The Oxford English Dictionary , published by the Oxford University Press, is the self-styled premier dictionary of the English language. Two fully bound print editions of the OED have been published under its current name, in 1928 and 1989. The first edition was published in twelve volumes , and...
by allowing people to submit their website as the definition of their chosen word. The project, created to fund two Masters students' educations, attracted the attention of bloggers worldwide, and was featured on Daring Fireball
Daring Fireball
Daring Fireball is the web site of John Gruber, an Apple enthusiast and writer. Daring Fireball hosts Gruber's opinions in the form of a blog, and also some of Gruber's software...
and Wired Magazine
Wired (magazine)
Wired is a full-color monthly American magazine and on-line periodical, published since January 1993, that reports on how new and developing technology affects culture, the economy, and politics...
.
The marketing campaign for the 2008 film The Dark Knight
The Dark Knight (film)
The Dark Knight is a 2008 superhero film directed, produced and co-written by Christopher Nolan. Based on the DC Comics character Batman, the film is part of Nolan's Batman film series and a sequel to 2005's Batman Begins...
combined both online and real-life elements to make it resemble an alternate reality game
Alternate reality game
An alternate reality game is an interactive narrative that uses the real world as a platform, often involving multiple media and game elements, to tell a story that may be affected by participants' ideas or actions....
. Techniques included mass gatherings of Joker
Joker (comics)
The Joker is a fictional character, a comic book supervillain published by DC Comics. He is the archenemy of Batman, having been directly responsible for numerous tragedies in Batman's life, including the paralysis of Barbara Gordon and the death of Jason Todd, the second Robin...
fans, scavenger hunts around the world, detailed and intricate websites that let fans actually participate in "voting" for political offices in Gotham City, hidden phone numbers and websites in the queue lines of The Dark Knight roller coasters at Six Flags Great America and Six Flags Great Adventure, and even a Gotham News Network that has links to other Gotham pages such as Gotham Rail, a Gotham travel agency, and political candidate's pages. The movie also markets heavily off of word of mouth from the thousands of Batman fans.
Between December 2009 and March 2010 a series of seven videos were posted to YouTube under the name "iamamiwhoami
Iamamiwhoami
iamamiwhoami is an electronic music and multimedia project headlined by Swedish singer-songwriter Jonna Lee. Videos released from the project's YouTube channel have spread virally. The first clip was uploaded on December 4, 2009, and was forwarded to a number of music journalists and blogs. Another...
" leading to speculation that they were a marketing campaign for a musician. In March 2010, an anonymous package was sent to an MTV
MTV
MTV, formerly an initialism of Music Television, is an American network based in New York City that launched on August 1, 1981. The original purpose of the channel was to play music videos guided by on-air hosts known as VJs....
journalist claiming to contain a code which if cracked would give the identity of the artist. The seventh video, entitled 'y', appears to feature the Swedish singer Jonna Lee
Jonna Lee (singer)
Jonna Lee is a singer-songwriter from Linköping, Sweden, currently residing in Stockholm and London, UK.-Early life:Lee was born 1981 in Linköping and grew up in a small Swedish village in the country with her mother...
.
On July 14, 2010, Old Spice launched the fastest growing online viral video campaign ever, garnering 6.7 million views after 24 hours, ballooning over 23 million views after 36 hours. Old Spice's agency created a bathroom set in Portland, OR and had their TV commercial star, Isaiah Mustafa
Isaiah Mustafa
Isaiah Mustafa is an American actor and former NFL practice squad wide receiver. Mustafa is widely known as the main character for a series of Old Spice TV commercials, The Man Your Man Could Smell Like.-Early life:...
, reply to 186 online comments and questions from websites like Twitter
Twitter
Twitter is an online social networking and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read text-based posts of up to 140 characters, informally known as "tweets".Twitter was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey and launched that July...
Facebook
Facebook is a social networking service and website launched in February 2004, operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. , Facebook has more than 800 million active users. Users must register before using the site, after which they may create a personal profile, add other users as...
Reddit
reddit is a social news website where the registered users submit content, in the form of either a link or a text "self" post. Other users then vote the submission "up" or "down," which is used to rank the post and determine its position on the site's pages and front page.Reddit was originally...
, Digg
Digg
Digg is a social news website. Prior to Digg v4, its cornerstone function consisted of letting people vote stories up or down, called digging and burying, respectively. Digg's popularity prompted the creation of copycat social networking sites with story submission and voting systems...
, Youtube
YouTube
YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....
and others. The campaign ran for 3 days.
Methods
- Customer participation & polling services
- Industry-specific organization contributions
- Internet search engines & blogBlogA blog is a type of website or part of a website supposed to be updated with new content from time to time. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in...
s - Mobile smartphoneSmartphoneA smartphone is a high-end mobile phone built on a mobile computing platform, with more advanced computing ability and connectivity than a contemporary feature phone. The first smartphones were devices that mainly combined the functions of a personal digital assistant and a mobile phone or camera...
integration - Multiple forms of print and direct marketing
- Outbound/inbound call center services
- Target marketing Web services
- Search engine optimizationSearch engine optimizationSearch engine optimization is the process of improving the visibility of a website or a web page in search engines via the "natural" or un-paid search results...
(SEO) web development - Social mediaSocial mediaThe term Social Media refers to the use of web-based and mobile technologies to turn communication into an interactive dialogue. Andreas Kaplan and Michael Haenlein define social media as "a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0,...
interconnectivity - Television & radio
VMS target marketing is based on three important principles:
- Social profile gathering
- Proximity market analysis
- Real-time key word density analysis
By applying these three important disciplines to an advertising model, a VMS company is able to match a client with their targeted customers at a cost effective advantage.
The Internet makes it possible for a campaign to go viral very fast. However,the Internet and in particular, social media technologies do not make a brand viral; they just enable people to tell other people faster. The Internet can, so to speak, make a brand famous overnight.
Social networking growth
Two thirds of the world’s Internet population now visit a social networkSocial network
A social network is a social structure made up of individuals called "nodes", which are tied by one or more specific types of interdependency, such as friendship, kinship, common interest, financial exchange, dislike, sexual relationships, or relationships of beliefs, knowledge or prestige.Social...
or blog
Blog
A blog is a type of website or part of a website supposed to be updated with new content from time to time. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in...
site weekly. 220+ million people visit the top 25 social networks each month. Facebook
Facebook
Facebook is a social networking service and website launched in February 2004, operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. , Facebook has more than 800 million active users. Users must register before using the site, after which they may create a personal profile, add other users as...
has 500+ million active users. Time spent visiting Social media
Social media
The term Social Media refers to the use of web-based and mobile technologies to turn communication into an interactive dialogue. Andreas Kaplan and Michael Haenlein define social media as "a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0,...
sites now exceeds time spent emailing. 52% of people who find news online forward it on through social networks, email, or posts. 59% of adults polled state that they use their cell phone to remain connected with their social network.
See also
- Guerrilla marketingGuerrilla marketingGuerrilla warfare is about waging small intermittent attacks on different territories of the opponent with the aim of harassing and demoralising the opponent and eventually securing permanent footholds....
- Viral videoViral videoA viral video is one that becomes popular through the process of Internet sharing, typically through video sharing websites, social media and email...
- Seeding agencySeeding agencyA Seeding Agency is a social media advertising agency which places branded films on websites, messageboards and online communities that are heavily frequented by users. Usually a client pays a seeding agency per hit. There are a number of seeding agencies in the US, among the most popular are...
- The Viral FactoryThe Viral FactoryThe Viral Factory is a full service viral marketing agency based in Shoreditch, United Kingdom.-History:The Viral Factory was founded in 2001 by Ed Robinson and Matt Smith....
- The 7th ChamberThe 7th ChamberThe 7th Chamber is a viral marketing seeding agency with offices in London, New York, Singapore and Sydney. The agency was founded in 2003 by Richard Spalding and Pete Longhust, two of the founders of the website Kontraband.com which was sold to Dennis Publishing in 2009...
- Marketing buzzMarketing buzzMarketing buzz or simply buzz — a term used in word-of-mouth marketing — is the interaction of consumers and users of a product or service which serves to amplify the original marketing message. a vague but positive association, excitement, or anticipation about a product or service...