They are like tiny waves, spreading ever further from a single pebble dropped into a pond. The ripples fanned out by eager beavers, yearning for the proverbial pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Enter the world of viral marketing, where a carefully designed marketing strategy ripples outward extremely rapidly.
Viral marketing is a term coined to define the productive ways a marketing message is made available. And corporates are using the medium to circulate brands and brand messages. The idea has caught on like a virus, as efficiently as Information Technology has entered households and businesses.
Firms are now structuring their businesses in a way that allows them to grow like a virus and lock out the existing brick and mortar competitors through innovative pricing and exploitation of competitors' distribution channels. The beauty of this marketing technique is that none of it requires any marketing. Customers, who have caught the virus, do the selling.
What does a virus have to do with marketing, you might ask? 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. Like viruses, such strategies take advantage of rapid multiplication to explode the message to thousands, to millions.
Off the Internet, viral marketing has been referred to as "word-of-mouth'', "creating a buzz'', "leveraging the media'' and even "network marketing.'' It's a deceptively simple concept: Create a message, send it via e-mail, and make it so compelling that recipients want to pass it on to everyone in their address book. Advertisers are hot on the tactic, and the idea of putting consumers to work spreading the word about a brand or service seems sound.
What is unique about the concept is that where brands or brand ideas are exchanged within communities, they are idea-led, not advertising-led. There are some high-profile viral success stories. Like Hotmail. By simply sending an e-mail, consumers hawked the service because every message contained a Hotmail ad. That helped it grow to 12 million accounts in its first year, way back in 1996. The 1999-hit film 'The Blair Witch Project' also benefited from a similar contagion. On web sites and in chat rooms, the film's promoters hinted that the fictional tale was really a documentary and let the bug run wild. In most cases, the consumers were bitten.
It was not long before viral marketing spread its tentacles to India, though most of the corporates refused to bite at first. It is only now that it has come of age. Coca-Cola tried it with its 'Wakaw' promotion for Vanilla Coke and for their 'Jeeto India Jeeto' campaign. Bollywood, too, latched on to the virus and used it in `Mujhse Dosti Karoge'. As an official at a data promotion agency pointed out: "It’s a brand owners dream, to introduce a message to a set of consumers and then have that group work at popularising the message further. A chain-relay system, extolling the virtues of the brand.''
When Garnier launched its Fructis shampoo, they latched on to the idea. The firm had to introduce the aspect of five times stronger hair and the firm had a braid competition whereby consumers could register on a site and create a knot on the Fructis braid, as part of their entry into the contest. The knot creation was actually created (visually presented on the site) and as a next step, consumers were expected to invite their friends to visit the braid and add to their score. "A record 76,000 consumers created their own knot on the braid and forwarded the link to more than 82,000 of their friends,'' said a L’Oreal spokesperson.
Airline major KLM used this medium to promote one of its foreign vacations, wherein consumers had to scratch three hearts to reveal an image that had a foreign vacation embedded in it. Each consumer got one scratch, unless the link was forwarded to friends.
Television channel HBO also used viral marketing to promote its blockbuster movie 'Oceans 11' in India. A simple game was devised in which consumers needed to create their own 11 on the website by referring friends. The more friends one referred, the more clues one got, all of which led the consumer to a secret password that could open a safe that had cash prizes.
Just like banner ads and portals, viral marketing is being hailed as the 'Next Big Thing'. "Marketers are definitely jumping on this bandwagon,'' said a trade analyst, "After all, you have to admire the virus. He has a way of living in secrecy until he is so numerous that he wins by sheer weight of numbers. He piggybacks on other hosts and uses their resources to increase his tribe. And in the right environment, he grows exponentially, replicating again and again with geometrically increasing power, doubling with each iteration.''
Viral marketers practice delayed gratification. They may not profit today, or tomorrow, but if they can generate a groundswell of interest from something free, they know they will profit soon and for the rest of their lives. Since 'Free' happens to be the most powerful word in a marketer's vocabulary, most viral marketing programmes have attached themselves to it. The idea is to give away valuable products or services to attract attention. And, more importantly, someone else's resources are depleted rather than your own. A crafty marketing idea!
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