I am tired of people (mostly old fashioned advertising people) who believe that they are making “viral marketing” by putting a TVC online.
Yes there have been good examples of a TVC – or at least a short video – making a big viral impact. The two that I have top of mind is the Quiksilver Dynamite surfing and the Nike Football video with Ronaldinho. They made a huge impact, no doubt about that.
But the success of these two videos unfortunately gave many of the people in the advertising business struggling to understand this new media a fake revelation.
Heureka! You make a short video and just put it online, and it is “viral”. But there are (at least) two fundamental flaws to this thinking:
- You can never guarantee that something will be “viral”.
On TV you can pay more money and make sure that more people see you TVC, but since viral is solely dependent on people sending your stuff on to their friends, you essentially have no control over it once you have put it out there. You can seed it as many places as you like, but if it don’t catch on, you can never make it viral.* - Everything can be viral
One of the first examples I can think of that really took off was Burger King’s Subservient Chicken from 2004, another good example of marketing that has gone viral is Office Max’s Elf Yourself.
I am not against video – just to prove my point I think Nike’s new “Take it to the next level” video is extremely cool, and it is making it viral big time right now.
The problem is that the term “viral” is being abused. You can put a video online, but if nobody watch it, it is not viral. On the other hand, if 2 million people come and look at your animated gif because a friend sent them the link, your animated gif is certainly viral.
* How many hits does it take before you have gone viral? I do not know if there is a specific point when something has gone viral. Per definition if one person receives something and sends it on to just two more people it could be argued that it is viral. But here I am talking about the term viral in a “massive spread across the web” sense.
April 13th, 2010 at 7:56 pm
Viral marketing and advertising is challenging to master; but quick to define. It’s anything that spreads by means of word of mouth pretty much infectiously just like a virus in which if a single particular person sees it, immediately that individual transfers it to somebody else. Viral Advertising and marketing Movie, Posted on YouTube Witnessed by Individual Sent to other people by means of e-mail or posted elsewhere after which the cycle continues. They just hold sending it. We attempted not long ago to try and do an on the web marketing and advertising movie for this software package business plus they acquired great press within the protection market trade journals, however the hope is to possess it reside for the Web page after which you can have all customers forward it to their buddies. Viral advertising could be the spreading of the information on the substantial scale.