The Power of Viral Marketing
Let’s say that you create a really cool interactive game on your website. You put a button on the page labeled “Send to a Friend.” This button brings up an e-mail form prepopulated with a link to the game. You also put your company’s name and logo on the page.
You send your own e-mail with a link to the page to four friends. They all like it, and send it to four of their friends the next day; those sixteen people each send it to four of their friends, and so on.
At the end of 8 days, your company’s name and logo will have appeared in front of 65,536 people (48). That’s the exponential power of “viral marketing.”
A Network of Trust
Nobody seems to like the term “viral marketing,” with its connotations of disease and computers crashing, but it was coined at the very beginning of the phenomenon, and is now firmly established. Just as viruses, by dividing and subdividing, soon become quite populous, viral marketing campaigns can spread far and wide very quickly.
The first viral marketing campaign is generally credited to Hotmail, introduced in 1996. The value proposition was good: free e-mail (supported by advertising). As they were about to launch the product, it occurred to the team to put their own ad on every e-mail that any of their customers sent: “Get your private, free e-mail at http://www.hotmail.com.”
This simple strategy enabled the company to grow a subscriber base more rapidly than any other company in history, signing up more than 12 million subscribers in its first year and a half. (Hotmail was acquired by Microsoft in 1998.) The key element was trust: most of your e-mail is sent to people you know, who will tend to trust any endorsement you give (even if it’s implicit, as in the case of Hotmail). If the value proposition is good – free e-mail, or a really cool game – they will recommend it to their friends and associates.
The Landscape is Crowded
Since 1996, the concept of “viral marketing” has spread like an epidemic, and in many corners of the Web it has devolved from the buzz to a buzzword. There are a lot of companies out there offering “viral marketing” services that look suspiciously like spam with a good haircut. However, major agencies with major clients are also taking viral marketing seriously, with some very interesting results.
The top prize at last month’s Viral Awards (yes, they have their own award show) went to Burger King’s “Subservient Chicken” (www.subservientchicken.com). A primitive live-action video of a person in a chicken suit comes up, with a prompt in a box underneath: “Get chicken just the way you like it. Type in your command here.” To the right of the box is a bright red prompt: SUBMIT.
The system has a limited but effective natural language capability. We typed in “lie down” and “sit down,” and the chicken did so. “Turn around” got the chicken to turn around, but “turn on TV” had the same result. Links across the bottom will get you chicken photos or a chicken mask template; there is also the critical “Tell a Friend” prompt, and – the last link – “BK Tendercrisp.” Aha! That brings us to the Burger King home page and a prominently featured chicken burger.
“Subservient Chicken” has drawn 14 million visitors since it went live in April 2004. A fair number of eyeballs for BK Tendercrisp! Whether or not it has led to more sales for Tendercrisp has not been revealed by Burger King.
The Edgy and the Grown-Up
Some in the industry wonder whether the true impact of viral marketing will be confined to bloggers, Webheads and people under 25. Georgia Pacific is betting otherwise, and recently launched an interactive viral site, “Innocent Escapes” (www.brawnyman.com), promoting its Brawny line of paper towels to women aged 25 to 54.
The tagline for “Innocent Escapes” is “The man who is always there for you is always here”, and the concept is a cunning piece of marketing: “you” is the camera, and “the man” – a good-looking, soft-spoken, artistic and exquisitely sensitive stand-in for the big guy pictured on the paper towel package – looks into “your” eyes and talks about life, relationships and your problems. Best of all, you can custom-design the experience from a number of clips, organized into three main categories that shamelessly display the site’s hand: “Warm Welcomes,” “Shows of Strength” and “Quality Time.” Again, there is the critical button: “Send to a Friend.”
“Brawnyman” offers an intriguing glimpse into the possibilities of extending and deepening a brand identity far beyond the limits of a 30-second TV spot, while spreading it across the land over viral marketing’s network of trust.
To the Viral Barricades!
“Edgy” is not a term you would think to apply to Consumers Union, publisher of Consumer Reports, but they have mounted the political barricades against the excesses of big drug companies with an extremely effective piece of Web animation, “The Drugs I Need” (www.consumersunion.org – click on the red link, “See the animation!”) A peppy song by the Austin Lounge Lizards introduces us to the all-purpose “$10 pill” Progenitorivox, along with its side effects such as “constipation, male lactation, rust-colored urination, hallucinations, bad vibrations, debtors’ prison and deportation...”
At the end, a screen comes up: “Had enough? Take action now!” and we go to an e-mail petition to establish a national registry of drug trials, which Consumers Union will send to Congress as soon as you fill in your personal information. (You can customize the petition by rewriting it.) Strangely, there is no “Send to a Friend” button, an unusual omission; nonetheless, in the first 3 weeks after its release, the site had more than a half-million hits and generated 75,000 letters to Congress.
Big Budget vs. Home-Grown
Viral marketing and its blog-based brother, Word of Mouth (WOM) marketing, are currently spreading rapidly in every direction (see sidebar), and agencies specializing in these techniques are springing up on many continents, Europe in particular. As the previous examples indicate, most of these games and commercials are not cheap, involving a lot of creative inspiration and production value (not to mention a lot of server power, which you’ll need if you’re going to get half a million hits).
However, viral marketing power can be tapped even on a local, home-grown basis. Most important, you need an inherently infective product or service – something people will want, and will want to pass on to their friends. Flash animation can deliver your concept in affordable and Web-friendly style (see the “Bush’s Brain” game at http://viral.lycos.co.uk). All you have to do is come up with the brilliant idea!
A Viral Sampler
“Bagel Bonanza” From the Bagel Factory (UK), the opportunity to win one of 25,000 prizes – “From a bagel to a cup of tea!” A very simple Flash-based game that works because it really challenges your hand-eye coordination. “Recommend a Friend” button.
“innw” A site apparently designed for the under-20 crowd, featuring an obscure game, downloadable audio clips, a discussion board and IM-speak notes such as “you cud win cul stuff” (perhaps an indication that this is what over-40 agency types think the under-20 crowd wants ...).
“A Red Cup Journey” A single-concept, well-produced Christmas ad for Starbucks. The only thing that makes it viral is the “Pass it Along” button. Suggests that agencies are finding low-rent ways to extend the reach of their TV commercials. Will work only if the commercials are good enough to take up your friends’ time.
“Making Over Mona” Listen to chamber music while you inject the Mona Lisa with Botox and collagen, apply chemical peel and surgery, and watch what happens. “Forward to a Friend” button and “The Real Solution”, which takes you to a page for Apothia beauty products.
“Adverblog” Clearing house for blogs about hot (or not) new ads. The viral marketing page is a good place to find the latest outrageous viral marketing pieces, including many featured in this newsletter.
Viral + Buzz Marketing Association Tips, links, and a good newsletter to check for all the fast-moving developments in the viral marketing world. The VBMA Manifesto 1: Mission and Affiliation attempts to define viral marketing in terms of its ethical dimensions.
Word of Mouth Marketing Association Blogs for bloggers. Links, stories, conferences and a recently published WOMMA Code of Ethics, based on the Honesty ROI: Honesty of Relationship, Opinion and Identity.
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