Understanding Viral Marketing

Viral campaigns can be used to achieve a variety of different marketing objectives. Both agencies and brands must understand what a viral can and can’t do, and they must ensure that it fits in with the wider marketing strategy.

If a brand is scared of using viral then they probably don’t fully comprehend the medium, or have heard the negative stories of badly designed viral campaigns. But that isn’t an excuse for not using viral. Viral marketing can be used for a variety of interesting factors such as:

• Buzz: To launch a product, act as part of an ignition campaign, or to create brand awareness
• PR: To form the central ‘event’ around which a brand can sell PR stories into offline/online press
• Data-capture: To increase an email database, or find out something about the audience by integrating a polling function
• Direct sales: To drive traffic through to an e-commerce site and generate direct sales
• Pure advertainment: Using the viral simply to entertain the audience, while constantly reminding them of the brand
• Brand participation: Using the interactive nature of the viral to get people interacting with the brand

Viral marketing can be more sophisticated than just pure shock, tits, ass and the “ick” factor. Yes, it’s easy to exceed expectation by shocking the audience, however there are now more sophisticated and intelligent ways of making a viral campaign work. Nevertheless viral marketing doesn’t have to be overly complicated. Simple marketing mechanics like competitions can also work well, so brands shouldn’t ignore simplicity.

But a brand shouldn’t just do a viral because it is fashionable, or because their competitors are doing it, and choosing to use viral at the last minute is a common mistake. Brands will only get the most out of a viral if it’s planned early on as part of a wider campaign. The execution and creative of a viral should be determined by the campaign objectives and, realistically, by the budget. Commission a campaign by saying “we want a game” or “we want a film” is a big no-no.

What's more, trying to do too much within a single campaign is also a common problem, so making sure the objectives at the beginning of the process are realistic is very important. There will always be compromises to be made between objectives like the levels of brand control and data-capture, against levels of awareness generated through strong unconstrained creative.

For an agency, referring to the word “viral” in the creative can in fact be detrimental, as most clients don’t actually know what a viral is, so using the term can lead to people rejecting the idea. A viral will succeed or fail according to its creative. Agencies must think about why someone would pass it on to their friends. Simply creating a ‘splat’, or game involving a brand mascot, will not go viral. Viral campaigns need to be a talking point and to lead to that magical “water cooler moment”.

Just using the TV ad is not a viral. Unless the TV ad is outstanding, a re-purposed ad it isn’t going to go viral. Importantly, the content of a viral needs to be special in some way. The only way a brand can create mileage out of a TV ad is to create something like a special pre-release, include outtakes or special bonus features. Or, if they want controversy, get the as banned on TV and release it for ‘Internet only’ amidst a flourish of PR.

In addition, brands must consider the long-term, and the fact that a viral is ‘not just for Christmas’. Whereas traditional advertising media are largely limited by media space cost, once a viral is launched it can work on an ongoing way. Based around this premise, brands can develop a whole 'advertainment' campaign containing different viral executions.

Viral is also not just about the ‘Internet’. The best viral concepts are capable of creating a cross-media buzz, so when planning a campaign, agencies should think about the other media which viral can reach out into, for example; mobile (through Bluetooth), offline press, and TV. Viral can also work on both a global and a local basis, and although localised virality is more difficult to achieve, it is possible with the right strategy and creative.

Viral is not the same as a direct email campaign. A viral campaign is designed to work through word-of-mouth / peer-to-peer self referral mechanics. Buying a mailing list can be effective as part of the seeding mix, but should always be clearly justified (i.e. in terms of specific targeting).

Seeding is about placing viral content in front of key influencers within the target networks, but is often an area that is overlooked, and seen as just relying on the good-will of the agency to send out the campaign. Just as a brand wouldn’t commission a TV ad without buying media space, they shouldn’t commission a viral without considering the cost of seeding. If the creative is positioned correctly, a viral will be passed between people within these networks, and although the more influential networks now charge for posting a campaign on their site, there are still 1000’s of other sites that don’t charge.

Successful viral campaigns are not just about attracting millions of users, as often 90% of the viewers will not be the target market. Brands must be clear about what they are looking to achieve at the start of the campaign, and judge a campaign’s success against these metrics. They also need to ensure that they budget for all stages of a viral campaign, from initial strategy development to the seeding and tracking of a campaign.

In summary viral marketing is an art, requiring a set of specialist knowledge, but viral campaigns can be boiled down to 4 core activities:

• Strategy: Identifying the objectives, how viral fits in with the wider brand activity and how to achieve goals within budget
• Creative: The development of creative ideas across different media formats (e.g. game / film / application)
• Production: Turning ideas into reality. Different media take differing amounts of time to produce, and incur differing costs
• Seeding and tracking: Launching a campaign, seeding it into the relevant influencer networks and tracking its success

We Are The Toys

Generally viral videos have either become a bit old hat, or they have been overtaken by more technically complex solutions.

But every now and then you come across one that just makes you smile:

http://www.wearethetoys.com/

The Real Viral Effect

People normally think of the viral effect in terms of an exponential curve. The number of views gently curving upwards and upwards as time goes by.

The reality of how viral campaigns really perform is, however, a lot more complex.

A real viral curve has an initial launch boost, which is similar to the classic exponential curve, and shows the preliminary surge a campaign generates on launch – generally created from the initial seeding push.

This initial curve is though then followed by a plateau. This leveling off viewings represents the “community conversation” around the campaign – in blogs, community forums, social networks etc. over a sustained period of time.

Finally there is the long tail. This is the legacy of a viral campaign and is created by the huge amount of referrers generally created from any form of viral activity.

The most interesting aspect of the real viral curve is the long tail – an area often over-looked in developing marketing strategies. It is important remember how viral campaigns continue to attract interest way beyond the initial viral launch period, and shows the ongoing value of viral marketing.

Film 2.0

It was almost ten years ago that “The Blair Witch Project” first harnessed the power of viral marketing to elevate what was a low-budget independent film into a $248 million blockbuster. Earlier this year, “Cloverfield” made the most of Web 2.0 with its use of fake YouTube clips, Myspace pages and blogging. Cloverfield highlighted the use of online content to not only market films, but also extend the viewers overall film experience by layering content before and after the films release – creating a ‘multi-layered experience’.

The latest, and perhaps most ambitious, example of Web 2.0-styled multi-layered films is “Tropic Thunder” – a kind of Apocalypse Now meets Spinal Tap action comedy featuring Ben Stiller, Jack Black and Robert Downey Jr. as a set of prima donna actors making a Vietnam War film.

Multi-layering is at the heart of Tropic Thunder – affecting its concept, plot, characters and marketing. Conceptually the film is a Vietnam “making of” style movie – with a ton of Apocalypse Now references, but within the plot there’s also a “making of” (or should that be “making of making of”) documentary. On top of this, there’s a whole host of back-stories for each of the main characters, including actor’s microsites and fictitious film trailers.

Each of these layers are then given depth online using a mix of video, interactive (http://www.mytoons.com/game/play/19669) and microsite content (http://www.tropicthunder.com), creating a whole web of crisscrossing layers that the fan can get absorbed in – helping extend the film’s overall experience, and providing powerful viral marketing fuel.

As a quick guide, here’s a few of Tropic Thunder’s layers:

Layer tactic 1: Faux trailers of the main characters past films have been created and distributed on their own personal websites. Paramount spawned an official site for star Tugg Speedman (http://www.tuggspeedman.com) – Ben Stiller’s character, as well as sites for some of his films like ‘Simple Jack’. Tugg’s favourite charity even has its own site – www.pandarelocationfoundation.org
There is also a site for the fictional company that turned Downey’s character into a coloured man in Tropic Thunder.

Layer tactic 2: A faux trailer and blog for the mockumentary ‘Rain of Madness’ (http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=TlTxeuOQpt0) has been released as a parody of Apocalpyse Now's ‘Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse’ – a ‘layeriffic’ documentary on the making of a movie within a movie.

Layer tactic 3: One of the greatest facets of the viral campaign is a star-studded attempt at the creation of their own viral, (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBNVJG15tGs), which was originally aired during the MTV Movie Awards but can now be found on YouTube generating millions of views. The video shows the three lead actors on a mission to create a viral video for the Internet that could promote the movie.

Layer tactic 4: Paramount has reversed the conventional product-placement route by distributing a product that’s featured in the movie called Booty Sweat – an energy drink: (http://www.bootysweat.com). They even went as far as making an ad for the product: (http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=38qTqp9cWbw).

With all this layering and inbuilt “talkable content”, Tropic Thunder’s a really good example of how film-making and marketing are being integrated together to ultimately create a self-marketing “social” film.

Graffiti artist tags Buckingham Palace in YouTube video

A young graffiti artist wearing a hoodie appears to tag Buckingham Palace in video footage posted on YouTube in a hoax to promote the film 'The Wackness'.

The video shows the palace at night with bearskin cap wearing guards on patrol. Various camera angles show a young man wearing a hooded jacket and backpack scaling a fence, running towards the palace and spraying the words "The Wackness" on the stone walls.

The camera then pans back to show the whole of the building and the small patch of graffiti to the right of the front entrance.

A user called KingTag89 posted the video, which also includes his website address www.kingtag.com

The website includes the video and text stating: "wnt 2 c da queen but she wazn't @ her crib. dun dis 4 da $$$ check on dis 2 graf dis film tag n hit buck pal n tagged it up prpr. nunaya can tuch KT!!!! i iz getting a G 4 dis ***!!!!"

The 7 essentials of a Viral Campaign

The biggest problem most websites have is that they are instantly forgettable. They sell or say the same thing as hundreds or thousands of other sites; to an audience that is so quick to click-away, that a large percentage of their traffic never appreciates why they should buy anything or listen to what's being said.

In order for a website, or ad campaign, to be interesting enough for visitors to stick-around, or clever enough to be viral, it must be compelling enough to prompt viewers to; stay, absorb, and pass it onto friends and colleagues.

This does not mean that the media presented has to be salacious or somehow socially inappropriate. Common viral videos of silly people doing immature things on fuzzy video maybe viral for people with too much time on their hands, but it's viral without a marketing or branding purpose. Purposeful virals present meaningful theme-based messages within the context of an entertaining experience that is worth repeating and distributing. In other words, it must have both substance and style.

The 7 essentials of a viral campaign are therefore:

1. Engage the Audience
Grab Attention. If you start with the idea that Web traffic is an audience, you stand a better chance of grabbing their attention and making a connection that will get them to stick around long enough to listen to your message.

2. Enlighten and Inform
Provide Substance. Having a specific marketing or branding point, but understanding that not everyone is going to get all the references, but for those who do, the target audience, will be truly engaged by the presentation and informed by the content.

3. Stylize the Experience
Create an Experience. Of course we can present the same basic content with a straightforward presentation in a clear and concise manner, but it would be uninspiring and instantly forgettable. In marketing, being forgettable is the first deadly sin. If you're not creating an experience for your audience you will never be remembered no matter how important, or potentially useful, your information.

4. Focus
Be Consistent. Companies can't be all things to all people, but hammering away at the same message in the same manner can create a scenario where the audience feels they've heard it all before. The challenge is to keep campaigns fresh and new, while at the same time delivering a focused, consistent message. Don't change the message; just present it in new and exciting ways.

5. Entertain
Be Memorable. Be Bold. Deliver meaningful concepts that are worth the audience's time and attention because they inform and entertain at the same time: a simple idea that relies on creative implementation to make it memorable. The challenge is to turn advertising into memorable content. For the Web to be an effective marketing environment it must be more than a digital corkboard where millions of businesses place their flyers. The Web is a communication environment and effective communication must be entertaining and enlightening.

6. Resonate
Hit A Nerve. The flip side of entertaining is the necessity to connect to your audience. The message and the style must hit a nerve and a light bulb must go off in the audience's head that says, 'I get it.' What makes the Web such a powerful marketing and branding tool is its ability to communicate on a verbal, non-verbal, and metaphoric level. If a solution isn't communicating on all three levels then you’re missing opportunities to resonate and connect with your audience, and that means lost opportunity and business.

7. Excite
Compel Action. We all understand the need for a call to action but how can you expect people to pick up the phone, email, or fill-in a contact form if they aren't turned-on by your presentation. You cannot treat viral as a one-off commercial. It needs following up, a series, a campaign based on a terrific focused, differentiating concept.

The Web, unlike television, offers businesses the opportunity to create meaningful marketing campaigns that excite, entertain, and enlighten an audience looking for more. For some it's a giant leap of faith to accept the idea that something can be entertaining and meaningful at the same time. To turn a viral concept into an effective campaign – from advertising into content, not content into advertising, needs vision, guts, and great creative idea.

Anti-Facebook viral anthem set to take web by storm

The backlash against Facebook appears to be growing if this humorous viral is anything to go by.

It lists all of the reasons why the social networking site has becoming so annoying, and looks set to take the web by storm.

It has been produced by Rebel Virals, the joint venture between Aspect Film and integrated agency Mason Zimbler, to promote the agency on the back of the current climate of anti-application angst.

It follows the report last week that Facebook suffered a decline in unique users in the UK for the first time since July 2006, falling 5% to 8.5m users in January, although the social networking site remains the most popular in the UK according to Nielsen.

Looking at the subject online highlights the fact that it will be specialist social networking sites that are the future, or part of it, along with generic sites with Facebook. This piece simply further articulates how we're all quickly falling out of love with this particular side of social networking and moving on.

That said, Facebook isn't going anywhere, but while many people have shut their accounts, most will keep them going, but visit less frequently.

Watch the viral here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZzP_69ZTFk

Lastminute.com fools passengers in airport viral

Lastminute.com has produced its first viral ad, filmed with hidden cameras at Stansted Airport.

Characters, including airport staff, cleaners and policemen perform an impromptu musical based around a vending machine. The ad promotes a half-price theatre ticket deal being run by the website.

Take a look at: http://youtube.com/watch?v=RgZuHlDuulk