Viral Marketing is defined as a "viral" means of creating brand awareness, subtley, by the use of social networks to spread a message to a mass audience. The success of viral marketing is the amount of replication that can be achieved by users/viewers, willfully passing along the message.
Successes
This recent marketing phenomena was started by Hotmail. Each outgoing email sent from a Hotmail email address contained a link to Hotmail offering a free Hotmail email address. The amount of users skyrocketed because Hotmail was the only online email address at the time that was 100% free with a large amount of hosting space available.
The Blair Witch Project was an independant horror film that was created by three students in Maryland in 1999. The budget for the move was $22,000USD and has taken in to date nearly $250,000,000USD. The main reason for success was the viral marketing that supported the film before its release. The Sci-Fi channel aired a fake documentary, a mockumentary, about the movie to further add to the speculation that the movie was based on true events. This tactic by Sci-Fi helped spread the teaser videos over the internet like wild fire helping ensure a huge opening of the movie. 1. PR and Media
There are many contributing factors for failure of viral marketing. One of the biggest reasons for failure according to Nate Elliot of Jupiter Research is that companies often incurr varying amounts of PR and media coverage because of their "viral marketing" campaigns. Elliot refutes that these campaigns are not viral because the companies themselves, speak to the media about them. Case in point, Burger King's Subservient Chicken. This has been touted as a success in viral marketing but the real driving force behind the campaign was the discusssions it caused amongst the media. The media helped drive awareness to the site, not making the entire campaign viral.
2. Trust is Broken
There are many examples of viral marketing campaigns formulated by companies where the trust is broken when the truth is revealed. Often once the truth has been revealed, there is a large amount of backfire on the company by its consumers. Sony had created a viral campaign that was based around a set of videos and blogs by "gaming fans" who wanted the new Sony PSP for Christmas. This campaign was created by a company called Zipatoni; the goal of the campaign was to generate interest in Sony's new product. Videos were uploaded to Youtube and a website/blog was created with the domain name http://www.alliwantforxmasisapsp.com/. The site is not longer functional but at the time of its operation, people became suspicious by the domain name alone. The site was actually hosted using ASP platform on a Linux server. Finding free/cheap blog hosting on an ASP platform is said to be hard to do. This of course brought to question the authenticity of the "fan" considering he wanted this PSP but still willingly paid for his site to be hosted rather than saved his money for a PSP. The blog could have been easily hosted on Blogger.com, Greatestjournal.com, Livejournal.com or any other free blogging site. Research into these videos by Somethingawful, one of the leading webites that gamer's frequent for game reviews, leading to the eventual end of Sony's viral marketing ploy. An official statement was released from Sony America stating:
" Busted. Nailed. Snagged. As many of you have figured out (maybe our speech was a little too funky fresh???), Peter isn't a real hip-hop maven and this site was actually developed by Sony. Guess we were trying to be just a little too clever. From this point forward, we will just stick to making cool products, and use this site to give you nothing but the facts on the PSP. "
-Sony Computer Entertainment America
3. Not Understanding "Seeding"
Seeding is reffered to as placing your content in the hands of the key influencers of your target market. These seeds are the most likely to a) understand the message b) like the message and c) will pass the message to their friends and family. It is the initial group of people who are going to start spreading the content.
4. The Viral Curve
As discussed previously, the rate at which the transmission and replication takes place is thought to be fast with viral marketing campaigns. The actual viral marketing curve, as show on the right, is actually drastically skewed to what most companies believe it will be. There is a definate plateau and the tail of the campaign is considered the "legacy." It is this misconception of viral marketing that leads to the failures; once marketers realize the amount of views are not what they had expected, they often try adding more to the campaign which usually leads to either a) a blown cover b) complete failure or c) both a and b.
5. Awareness Does Not Guarantee Profit
A viral marketing campaign may generate a great deal of awareness for the company but this awareness will either be good or bad as outlined above with the examples above. The awareness and perception of the company will be left in the legacy of the campaign. The Subservient Chicken left a lasting, positive legacy though left questions of its true authenticity of the campaign as being completely viral. In the case with Sony, there was a negative effect. Though both campaigns generated a lot of press, it does not necessarily mean that they helped increase profit. If the goal of the campaign is to simply gain awareness or change its perception in the consumer's mind, viral marketing can be a huge success. In most cases, these viral campaigns attempt to do too much and ignore the success that simplicity can create. A viral video may very well generate a lot of buzz but it will still not make the consumers purchase the product.
