Latest Updates: Viral Marketing RSS

• Social Media Sales Correlations
  
  

  Pat McCarthy 10:41 am on August 2, 2010 | 0 Comments Permalink | Post Your Comment!
  Tags: Community Management (134), Creative WOM Ideas (256), ROI (5), Viral Marketing, WOM How-to (591)

  Boring title, eh? The fact of the matter is that many brands will not invest in social media until they can definitively link it to sales. Well, two brands have done it and they deserve a look.

  Dominos in the UK

  With Facebook and Foursquare, Dominos build a community that buys more pizza. Mayors get free pizza. Others who check in get a free side dish. The program was designed to be easily measurable. After initial success in a test market, the campaign went nationwide.

  Old Spice

  Data showed that their “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like” video campaign has produced a 107% sales increase in the last month. This shows that if you can capture the community’s attention and provide interesting and entertaining content, your sales can bump in a big way.

  Read more about these examples at The Digital Influence Mapping Project

  

  

   

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• Weekend Round-Up: Old Spice Video Phenomena
  
  

  Pat McCarthy 9:32 am on July 19, 2010 | 0 Comments Permalink | Post Your Comment!
  Tags: Creative WOM Ideas (256), Viral Marketing

  Few missed Old Spice smash viral video hit series where the Old Spice man replied to over 100 community tweets and comments. The big marketing question is: Did it work?

  There were nearly 6 million views in the first 24 hours, beating Obama’s victory speech and the one where Bush dodges a shoe. So yes, it had insane exposure. But what drove the 2-day blitz was a lot of hard work from a team of creative and social experts.

  Key Takeaway: Combine different experts on projects. That will create an atmosphere that drives whip-crack content and widespread exposure.

  Read more at The Digital Influence Mapping Project

  

  

   

• Build Engagement Capital
  
  

  Pat McCarthy 10:23 am on April 23, 2010 | 1 Comments Permalink | Post Your Comment!
  Tags: Branding (6), Research (521), Viral Marketing

  

  Viral this. Viral that. If a million people watch your video but it doesn’t lead to sales, it is not a success. Josh Warner, President/Founder of WOMMA member Feed Company, recently created a great presentation explaining how engagement capital is affected by light branding, heavy branding and calls-to-action. Light branding is 4 times more sharable than heavy branding and 10 times more than calls-to-action. Viewers engage light branding 2 times as much as both heavy branding and calls-to-action. What does this mean for you and your plan to go viral? Know your goals before you roll tape. All three strategies have their benefits, but you will waste your time and money if you start with the wrong one.

  Read Josh’s article in AdAge here
  View his slidedeck on the subject here

  

  

   

• Soccer and a String Quartet
  
  

  Pat McCarthy 9:50 am on March 17, 2010 | 0 Comments Permalink | Post Your Comment!
  Tags: Creative WOM Ideas (256), EU (25), International (112), Viral Marketing, WOM in Entertainment (42)

  The UEFA Champions League is one of the biggest soccer events around. Heineken sought to capitalize on this with a very devious trick where girlfriends, professors, and were enlisted to convince their beaus to attend a string quartet instead of watching the game. In the cited link, you can watch the men make the painful choice to appease their girlfriend over their mates. Once at the concert, the visibly discontent victims of this prank encounter a surprise presentation of the Championship game. This video had great viral qualities. It played on human behavior and interrupted schemas. The press and blogosphere loved the video created, garnering millions of impressions. Hats off to Heineken and Kreatif360!

  Watch the video on 1000heads’ blog

  

  

   

• 5 Minutes with Jessica Johnson of Oddcast Part 1
  
  

  Pat McCarthy 9:38 am on February 16, 2010 | 0 Comments Permalink | Post Your Comment!
  Tags: Exclusive Interviews (20), Viral Marketing, WOM How-to (591)

  

  Role: Jessica wears a few different hats at Oddcast as a Marketing Manager. Not only does she do marketing for clients’ projects but also Oddcast’s services. While managing new projects, she works with both clients and analytics. Follow her @jesscapade on Twitter.
  Background: In her college years, Jessica studied Philosophy with a particular interest in technology and ethics. This interest is what drove her to the word of mouth marketing industry. Her interest in how people converse continues to help her develop campaigns and track what resonates with the consumer market.
  
  Oddcast has developed many different tools and widgets that allow users customize images. What have you found made them more sharable?
  The ones that really get shared are the “do this to your friend” types. We had one campaign for Quilmes Beer and Argentina’s National Friend’s Day where people could upload a photo which was turned into a 3D image. The user then created a fake secret that would spoken by the 3D image of their friend. People loved it. Campaigns like these, with the social component built in, seem to perform the best.
  
  What are the key elements of viral?
  I think it’s important to distinguish between viral videos and other viral content. Viral videos usually keep someone’s attention for under a minute. When it’s an application that allows for personalization, attention time rises — Oddcast sees average engagement times at around four minutes. Either way, it has to be something new, something novel. Otherwise there is no reason for someone to show it to a friend. That’s why we like to use personalization in our campaigns because it is inherently new and fresh.

  

  

   

• Girl Scouts get in the Game
  
  

  Pat McCarthy 11:55 am on February 12, 2010 | 0 Comments Permalink | Post Your Comment!
  Tags: Viral Marketing

  I don’t know about you, but I look forward to buying Girl Scout cookies every year. Despite my enthusiasm, their sales dipped 1% last year. This prompted Laurel Richie, their CMO, to think about some new ways to promote their largest revenue source. That is what led to their video “What Can a Cookie Do?” This video, viewed 34,000 times since Jan 19, explains all the personal and community benefits the cookies bring. The message is clear and true to the brand image of the Girl Scouts. It sheds light on all their work that is funded by the cookie sales. This is a great example of how an old brand can reengage a community with new media. That and the video is a home run. Watch it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Wy31SsNPv4
  Read the full article at Daily Finance

  

  

   

• Share this with a Friend
  
  

  Pat McCarthy 11:10 am on February 10, 2010 | 0 Comments Permalink | Post Your Comment!
  Tags: Creative WOM Ideas (256), Research (521), Viral Marketing

  Countless people have shared a story from the Internet with a friend. It is almost strange to see an article without the “Share with a Friend” widget. Jonah Berger and Katherine Milkman of the University of Pennsylvania recently produced a study that examined 3,000 randomly chosen New York Times articles based on how they were shared. You might think that controversial or shocking articles took the cake, but it turns out that awe inspiring content was the most sharable. “Emotion in general leads to transmission, and awe is quite a strong emotion,” said Dr. Berger. Though the study did not examine offline sharing, it doesn’t seem like too much of a leap to deduce that awe inspires sharing of not just articles but also products and ideas.
  More on the power of awe at The New York Times

  

  

   

• Traditional Funnel v. Viral Funnel
  
  

  Pat McCarthy 11:09 am on February 3, 2010 | 1 Comments Permalink | Post Your Comment!
  Tags: Research (521), Viral Marketing

  A study in viral marketing found some interesting stats on viral behavior that are worth a look for any marketer or community manager. In an examination of a 4-million strong network, researchers had four key findings:
  1. Consumers stayed in their personal network, often exchanging recommendations back and forth with the same friends.
  2. Recommendation networks centered on specific types of products creating a “community of interest.”
  3. Trust, influence and the perception of “spam” were all purchase factors.
  4. Most recommendation chains were short, ending in the initial product purchase more often than not.
  Read more analysis and the 4 Viral Implications for Marketers at Randall Beard’s blog

  

  

   

• Coke Goes Viral
  
  

  Pat McCarthy 11:34 am on January 20, 2010 | 1 Comments Permalink | Post Your Comment!
  Tags: Brands and WOM (503), Viral Marketing

  Coke made its first foray into viral videos and came out with a smash. They placed a Coke machine on a college campus that not only gave out free Coke but also flowers, pizza and a six foot sub. The students reacted perfectly, laughing and passing around the extra bottles. I think it is worth analyzing why this video hit the mark. Unlike scripted ads and videos, Coke created a situation that elicited the desired response. They stayed true to their image while challenging the expectations of their customers. The video is powerful because of the real reactions from real people. Seeing them so happy made me happy. And that is exactly the emotion Coke wants consumers to feel when thinking about Coke.
  Watch the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lqT_dPApj9U
  Read more on the video at MediaPost

  

  

   

• Mobile Istanbulites
  
  

  Pat McCarthy 10:30 am on January 8, 2010 | 0 Comments Permalink | Post Your Comment!
  Tags: International (112), Mobile Marketing (66), Viral Marketing

  At the recent Brand Conference in Istanbul, Turkey, viral and mobile marketing were the talk of the town. The interest in mobile stems from its unique ability to have a nearly 100 percent penetration rate. Unlike other forms of reaching consumers, mobile phones maintain their high quality of consumer connection. This is particularly interesting to Turkey where not everyone has an Internet connection but most have mobile phones.
  Read more about the conference at The Hurriyet Daily News