Good way of the promotion - Viral Marketing!

In this issue, I learned a good way of the promotion - Viral Marketing!

Now, Hong Kong's economy is very depressed, many companies will not spend too much money on promotional activities and advertising of goods.

However, new products must make consumers aware of the promotion so it must be made!

How to do?

E-marketing at this time to face one of the ways - viral marketing on the small and medium-sized companies will be a good helper as:

Viral Marketing with the promotion of the many advantages such of low cost, rapid dissemination!

The campaign just need to make the idea of a new subject in particular ways to make use of person-to-person information like VIRAL spread !

It is benefit of the same mass, time-saving, cost less, the effectiveness of large !
Therefore, I think that will VIRAL MARKETING is widely used in the future !

Viral Marketing Campaign: HK PCCW raps to create viral buzz

PCCW in Hong Kong was rolled out a series of viral videos in order to offering consumers a more efficient and affordable long-distance telecommunications service as well as to build brand traits in the market. PCCW campaign strategically targets different audiences especially the families with children studying abroad who frequently use long-distance services. To communicate those audiences, the viral videos are executed because of the large online community and the ability to communicate with target groups all over the world.

Stage 1 of the viral video is titled gangsta mama featuring a group of mothers rapping to their children for not calling back.

Stage 2 didn’t mention the brand but a reply from the sons on why they did not call back.

The finale stage featured international rapper MC Jin who finally revealed the PCCW brand.

The videos ride on the popularity of rap songs and unusual style to create viral ability and also endorsed by famous USA rapper MC Jin to further enhance viral power. The videos are broadcast on Youtube, Facebook & in discussion forums and the finale MTV is broadcast at PCCW Shop.

5 Tips for strating a Viral Marketing Campaign

Till now, I think you have read certain examples about viral marketing and obtain a clearly picture of it. However, you should know that the marketplace is changing day by day. Those marco and micro environmental changes will influence the effectiveness of the viral marketing campaign.

Therefore, let me share 5 tips with you for planning a viral marketing campaign.

1. Ensure your web site or e-newsletter are easy forwarding
If your message isn't easily forwarded, or it loses its structure in-route, your message will get lost in the tangle then your viral campaign just fizzled.


2. Offer an incentive, entertainment or service they can use
The consumers will only pay attention to the message that is perceived as beneficial to them.

3.Honesty and authenticity

Be sure your message is realistic and truthful. People will only forward the mail they believe is worthwhile.

4.Personalize the referral emails

When your message is forwarded, ensure the subject line is personalized. It is more appropriate if the subject line contain the name of the customer.

5.Continually promote friendly referrals
Every time you send something out, study your incentive success and repeat it with a slight twist to mix it up.

Viral marketing is perceived as an art instead of a science. The beauty is in the minimal costs can reap huge rewards if handled properly.

Latest trend of Viral Marketing - Twitter

Twitter is now not only a microbloging but also a useful utility for keeping in touch with the news and trendy topics. The biggest revolution of Twitter is its capacity to change nature of search and create demand for real-time search engines. The followings are some of the latest Twitter trends explored by marketers.

Real-Time Search Engines
Twitter has exceptionally created demand for the real time search but fails to organize real time information into useful bites of information. To fill this gap left by Twitter, there are many companies trying their innovative ways to tackle the organization of link and content in different manners. OneRiot and Tweetmeme are the most noticeable Twitter search engines which provide aggregate data in real search environment and are widely used by brands and professionals for tracking online conversations.

Verified Accounts
With a limited verification to celebrities, musicians, athletes, actors and public officials, Twitter has started its Verified Accounts program. It would decrease liability on Twitter and would make social network more responsive. Moreover, Verified accounts for businesses are pending as they would provide seal of authenticity from Twitter. As Twitter is under process for developing paid business, it is reserving verification under this category.

Trending Twitter Giveaways
Use of hashtag # for Square Space or any other company is creating a great trend over Twitter. Square Space topped the Twitter trends with iPhone 3G S giveaways as they were offering gift cards. Artists, musician and fame loving person is trying his bit using hashtag # to come up on the top position on Twitter.

Sponsored Tweets
Sponsored conversations on Twitter have started taking shape. There are different types of sponsored tweets visible through Twitter and some of them are legitimate to monetize Twitter stream. Companies like Magpie, TwittAd and adCause have developed Twitter as networks so that advertisers and Twitterers can find each other.

Twitter Chat
Twitter now has developed into a powerful communication platform, and luring sites like Justin.tv and Ustream (ustream). It upgrades their standard chat features to make it employable for bigger audiences on Twitter.

Justin.tv
Justin.tv has integrated with Twitter to let video viewers to view all the tweets diverted from Twitter users in the channel. So, tweets about the video appear in the chat area. Ustream fully designed Twitter chat functionality enables Twitterers to participate in a Twitter stream with other viewers in an additional chat area on Ustream

Six Principles of Viral Marketing vs Hotmail.com - 3

5) Utilizes existing communication networks
People sign up for their own free e-mail service, and then telling to their close network of friends, family, and associate. Network marketers have long understood the power of these human networks, both the strong, close networks as well as the weaker networked relationships.

6) Takes advantage of others' resources
Some viral marketing plans use others' resources to get the word out, such as affiliate programs, Hotmail.com give away free Web e-mail service propels the message still wider to their own ever-increasing circles of friends and associates.

Carefully to design the viral marketing strategy it's the powerful way to increase increase your business exponentially.

Reference: http://www.wilsonweb.com/wmt5/viral-principles-clean.htm

Six Principles of Viral Marketing vs Hotmail.com - 2

2) Provides for effortless transfer to others
Attach a simple tag at the bottom of every free message sent out: "Get your private, free email at http://www.hotmail.com". A short and clear message can be easily to transmit without degradation.

3) Scales easily from small to very large
Message spread like wildfire the transmission method must be rapidly scalable from small to very large. Hotmail.com used this element to attract netizen to use this free e-mail service, then stand back while people e-mail to their own network of friends and associates.

4) Exploits common motivations and behaviors
Design a marketing strategy that builds on common motivations and behaviors for its transmission, hotmail.com targeted "Who see the message" and encourage netizen to forward their e-mail to others for attracting use.

Reference: http://www.wilsonweb.com/wmt5/viral-principles-clean.htm

Six Principles of Viral Marketing vs Hotmail.com - 1

What is virus? What does a virus have to do with marketing? It is because virus doesn't even have to mate, it just replicates, again and again with geometrically increasing power, doubling with each iteration, in a few short generations, a virus population can explode.

With refer to my first post: The Classic Viral Marketing – Hotmail.com, it can show how successful the viral marketing strategies used. Briefly, we can see in the six basic elements as below:

1) Gives away products or services
"Free" is the most powerful word in a marketer's vocabulary. Hotmail.com is the first Web-based e-mail services which away free e-mail addresses and services. "Cheap" or "inexpensive" may generate a wave of interest, but "free" will usually do it much faster. They may not profit today, but if they can generate a groundswell of interest from something free, they know they will profit "soon and for the rest of their lives".

Reference: http://www.wilsonweb.com/wmt5/viral-principles-clean.htm

What/Why companies use Viral Marketing?

"Viral Marketing" has become a very trendy method to promote different brand products/services of a company or organization. Many companies are now using this strategy to get their message out. Through videos is one of the most effective methods of implementing a viral marketing campaign. Many major companies are using videos to attract wide audience. These videos can be seen on various social media sites such as YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, Digg, etc. Due to the evolution and success of viral videos as a marketing technique, this approach has been used more and more.

The below are listed out some major brands that using viral marketing videos.

Nike - Nike is one of the better users of using viral marketing videos.

Ray Ban - The video shows how two men can catch Ray Ban sunglasses perfectly on their faces when thrown at them, from all angles, so Ray Ban viral video is one of the successful example

Blendtec - is a viral marketing campaign consisting of a series of infomercials demonstrating the Blendtec line of blenders, especially the Total Blender.

G.O.D (Goods of desire) - To promote their new fashion collection - Delay No More, G.O.D use the social media youtube to promote their products.

Based on these examples, we can see that there are many benefits to making viral marketing videos and these companies obviously have capitalized. By using the internet to market, it can be less expensive than placing ads on TV.

Why there is a need that viral marketing tools need to mix with other traditional media.

Here is one of the examples that integrating viral marketing tools with traditional media like TV and magazine promote their event, When Polymuso want to promote their event : 'POLYMUSO annual performance', they used many viral marketing tools like a group in facebook, xanga and a promotion video which post on youtube.

In fact, it is very success to target the teenagers, who love band sound. As we know teenagers like using those social media to share their information. However, if they want to attract some one who never join this event before, it is hard to achieve this objective. Most of the group members only invite their friends, who also interested in band music, it is hard to extend and promote this activity to more people in Hong Kong.

Therefore, it also has an advertisement on 'milk' magazine and people can watch the show on TVB Music channel. Through this kind of media, they can let more people to aware this event and indie band in HK. Finally, they sold out all the tickets before the show.

Polymuso xanga
http://polymuso.xanga.com/

Polymuso Facebook
http://www.facebook.com/polymuso

Forms of Viral Marketing

There are many forms of Viral Marketing, mainly by e-mail forwarding or social network:

- E-mail forwarding is a common online activity. Passalong or forwarding has worked well for video clips, either they are attached to the e-mail or the e-mail contains a link to download the clip.

- Web-facilitated viral(e-mail prompt) is that the e-mail contains a link/graphic to a web page with "e-mail a friend".

- Incentivised viral offers some reward such as prize draw for providing someone else's address to increase referrals.

- Web-linked viral with links in discussion group postings or blogs which are from an individual are also popularly used.

- Social network-related viral marketing uses social networks such as Facebook to enable consumers to interact with or promote a brand as to influence perceptions about brands or products.

Either way, it is important when seeding the campaign to try to get as many targeted online and offline mentions of the viral agent as you can.

A viral marketing sample in hk

As we know, there are more and more people use viral marketing to promote their product and brands; here I would like to share one viral marketing sample in HK. G.O.D (Goods of desire) the famous furniture shop in HK, when they promote their new fashion collection: Delay No More, they did not use any tradition media to promote their products, but use the social media ‘Youtube’ to promote their product. As the raising of some new social media like YouTube and the advancing of build-in camera in the mobile phone, everyone can become a reporter, therefore more and more video posted on Youtube (bus uncle). As their market segment is teenagers, and they are very active in those social media, so G.O,D imitate the way that how those people shoot the video and set a attractive topic Finally it attracted many people to watch and talk about this video and it is more than 316,511 views for one video.

The first organization using viral marketing as promotion strategies

Do you know which organization using viral marketing as promotion strategies in the first?

Here's the result:

It's the cult film Blair Witch Project:

The makers of the film deliberately spread the Blair Witch urban myth two years before it is being announced. They cleverly chose college campus for initial screening because students are forever curious and have plenty of time for gossips. A web site was launched later and a discussion group was planted to generate interest and to keep the momentum going.

A fake "documentary" were also co-produced with the SciFi channel on the Blair Witch curse and was sired just days before the film was released.
In three years the film had grossed US$241mn at a cost of just $35,000, so this is a very sucessful sample in the viral marketing!

Power of Viral marketing - Prime Credit

This is one of the advertisements posted in YouTube.com by Prime Credit. Until now, it has over 20,000 hits. Apart from this, Prime Credit also host a group in Facebook, a popular social network in Hong Kong. The group has already attacted over 400 people to join them as a fans to keep themselves posted for the latest events / promotions of Prime Credit.

That is virual marketing! A message delivers as fast as the spread of virus. Apparently, viral marketing doesn't always need an incentive such as material goods to be effective. On the contary, the most successful viral campaigns are the ones that are created with emotion being involved. People that have been touched either by compassion, laughter, or shock are usually the most effective. If a person can have some type of profound experience by receiving a message, this can spark a huge viral campaign. We don’t have to look very far to find campaigns of this type online. With the advent of video being used so much in marketing these days, it has completely impacted the way in which viral campaigns are developing.

Be a lady Limited-one of the most successful companies using viral marketing tactics to promote in Hong Kong

Let's talk about a common viral marketing example in Hong Kong !!

In Hong Kong, Be a lady Limited that major provide the medical beauty and the cosmetic services and which used a viral marketing as a publicity tactics to promote the companies.

They organized the Slimming competition spokesman's campaign in every year to attract thousands of people every year to participate in. This company sometimes use an artise as company/product's spokesman, eg: Ms.Maria Cordero, Mr.Ha Yu, Freeze used them as spokesmen can draw the people attention and this company really know how to publicize the spokesman for the use of different products in different !

In my personally think that this company is one of the most successful companies using viral marketing tactics to promote in Hong Kong. Not to discuss the combination of the first freeze of the image, their behavior and promotion strategies has make response to the high popularity and attention, it also been to break the social taboo to talk about plastic surgery!

Viral marketing example - Burger King

Burger King is one of successful hamburger fast food restaurants. It has employed varied advertising programs. One of them was to create a series new characters like the Subservient Chicken featured in a series of viral web-based advertisements on sites such as MySpace (http://www.subservientchicken.com/) and its corporate pages to compliment the various television and print promotional campaigns.

BK's early success in the field was overshadowed by a 1982 deal between McDonald's and the Walt Disney Company to promote Disney's animated films beginning in the mid 1980s and running through the early 1990s. In 1994 Disney switched from McDonald's to Burger King, signing a ten film promotional contractwith BK which would include such top ten films as Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast, The Lion King, and Toy Story. A partnership in association with the Pokemon franchise at the height of its popularity in 1999 was one of the most successful in the industry, rivaled only by McDonald's/Ty Beanie Babies cross-promotion in 1999–2000.

BK was also a pioneer in the advertising practice known as the product tie-in with a successful partnering with George Lucas' Lucasfilm, Ltd. to promote the 1977 film Satr Wars (later renamed Star Wars EpisodeIV: A New Hope in which BK sold a set of glasses featuring the main characters from the film. This promotion was one of the first in the fast food industry and set the pattern that continues to the present.

One of the more unique promotions was the creation of a series of three advergames for the Xbox 360. Featuring company celebrity spokesman Brooke Burke, the games sold more than 2 million copies, placing them as one of the top selling games along with another Xbox 360 hit, Gears of War. These innovative ad campaigns, coupled with other new promotions and a series of new product introductions, drew considerable positive and negative attention to BK and helped TPG.

Viral marketing example - Micheal Jackson

Michael Jackson (August 29, 1958 – June 25, 2009) was an American recording artist, entertainer and businessman. He was referred to as the King of Pop. His popularity in all over the world was contributed by viral marketing that increases his exposure to people around the world.

The pioneer of Viral Marketing-Michael Jackson

Before "viral marketing" was even a term in our social media vocabulary. Michael Jackson was definitely the first artist to produce music video that was able to come across the world like the buzz since 1982 by his single--Thriller. This song disseminate over the world virally as most of the audiences were attracted by his unique dancing style in such music video.

In addition, the most representative production by Michael Jackson is in 1985--We Are the World. It is a meaningful charitable single written by Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie and recorded by a group of popular musicians in USA. The principle of this single is to encourage the world to concern about AIDS patients. Once this single released, it is widely spread out in USA and it helped to rise over $63 million to fight AIDS globally. Such great responses were mainly induced by the meaningful lyrics, memorable melody of the songs and the influence of the famous singers. This song can be penetrated the whole society effectively instead of advertising solely.

We Are the World


Upon today, We Are the World still very popular always re-recorded with different languages and singers. Recently, we can often hear this song from many charitable event regarding tsunami in Thailand and 5.12 Sichuan Earthquake.

Ray Ban Guy Catches Sunglasses with face-Viral Video

Ray Ban create this sunglass trick viral marketing video. Over 4 million views up to date. Although it is a fake, it looks really real. Many people are talking about how the skinny guys can catch the sunglass with face. Some people are trying to learn and practice to catch the sunglasses with face. The video is very successful.

The Dark Knight - Viral Recap....

The Dark Knight Viral Phone Message

The viral marketing campaigns online for The Dark Knight are absolutely brilliant, it expand awareness. The online version of the fictional newspaper arrived and was follows by numerous websites, including a defaced Joker version called "The Ha Ha Ha Times" it has a large awareness of the city. Few of the hardcore fans have been keeping track and they've got one hell of reward - they're members of Joker's army.

Dark Knight - Viral Marketing Campaign

Why So Serious?
Gave comic book fans and mainstream movie goers the chance to live in the world of The Dark Knight. Creating social media campaigns allowing users to interact with the buzz will create more viral mania than ever for future movies.

This viral marketing for The Dark Knight is really getting quite "real" and that's mean that it is really picking up and getting tangible and it's a brilliant way to nurture fan loyalty and gain immense buzz.

Viral Marketing Example: Cadbury Dairy Milk-brand chocolate

This example is a British advertising campaign launched by Cadbury Schweppes in 2007 to promote Cadbury Dairy Milk-brand chocolate. The campaign itself, which comprised appearances on billboards, print newspapers and magazines, television and cinema spots, event sponsorships and an internet presence.

The result was very success, it was well-received by the British public. The commercial was uploaded to video sharing website YouTube shortly after it first aired, and was viewed over 500, 000 times in the first week. As of November 2007, it has been viewed over six million times across a large number of video sharing webhosts.70 Facebook groups appreciating the ad have been set up, with one, named "We love the Cadbury's drumming gorilla", boasting 200 members.

This advertistment imporved their reputation, according to the polling company YouGov reported that public perception of the brand had noticeably improved in the period following the launch, reversing the decline experienced in the first half of 2007.


The orginal video of the advertisment


The video that made by other 3rd party

Power of word-of-mouth turned simple everyday thing into Viral Marketing - Rapping Southwest Flight Attendant

Like the spreading of the epidemic Swine Flu H1N1, viral marketing spreads through viral processes to reach a large number of people rapidly. It is word-of-mouth delivered and enhanced online. (Ref.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viral_marketing)

Below video - A Southwest flight attendant rapped his announcement in March this year, I think is a good example to reflect the power of word-of-mouth.

A passenger on the flight took this video and posted it on Utube. The great number of views made in a short period induced CNN to report it (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GbR_0hGxfZI&feature=related).
Knowing how famous this staff had become, Southwest grabbed this opportunity to launch its viral marketing campaign with this famous staff. It invites this famous rapping flight attendant to attend and rap in the company's activities, such as the shareholders' meeting . All his rappings were recorded and posted on Utube. Both Southwest and this flight attendant had become famous in the US.

This example points out two important attributes of viral marketing: 1) Simple everyday things can result in viral marketing, once they are made into something unusual and interesting to draw people's attention as to create word-of-mouth. 2) The power of word-of-mouth can bring out a great effect from a simple thing. This was totally started by an ordinary staff who did something a little bit special, but had caused a great impact. It has acted as free publicity and has raised awareness of Southwest. This positive viral marketing effect works better than any multi-million dollar commercial.

Viral Marketing Campaign: The Dove Evolution

"Dove Campaign for Real Beauty" is the one of the most successful example for using viral marketing. There have been several elements to the Dove Campaigns, pretty much all of interactive and successful.

Click on the link below to see this Dove promotion, a YouTube video that was posted in 2006. Since that time, this video has been viewed 9,034,821 times, commented on 4,199 times, and been rated 9,102 times. Talk about consumer interaction! Therefore, I believed that Dove was one of the more successful viral campaigns spread throughout the web like a virus.

Dove Evolution

At the end of the video, the message "Take part in the Dove real Beauty Workshop for Girls" would lead you to go to their website to see how to become beauty, also the website shown would also be stimulating and encouraging you to visit it.

Love or hate the Dove approach, this whole concept of creating a movement that is bigger than your product is a perfectly suited for viral marketing and the rest of the online world.

Viral Marketing Campaign: Love story? Difficult to believe it is an advertising !

It is very difficult to believe that the footage is advertising. In fact, the TV commercial is Lotte's 2% bottled water aired on MTV in Korea.

The commercial created quite a big sensation when it is first aired as evidenced by the huge traffic to the dedicated chat room.

The ads packaging as a love story, this make a very meaningful description of the two for love .. there are two very different views- Love is an ideal, or reality? Statements in advertising between lovers in the process, they may encounter differences between values or misunderstanding, there is a narrative of the ad !

Beginning with a misunderstanding, it tells of the two opposing outlooks on love, i.e., the pursuit of an idealised or realistic love, and all the resulting conflicts.

Many were deeply touched by this very successful viral and interactive campaign which should have help raised the 2% branding tremendously.

The Classic Viral Marketing - Hotmail.com

What comes to mind when you hear or see the term Viral Marketing? A virus? Something spreading like wildfire? Something that is multiplying out of control?

However Viral Marketing has nothing to do with medicine. The term appropriately describes a method of business promotion that can increase your business exponentially. In other words, it can expose your business to a lot of people in a very short time.

The classic example of Viral Marketing is Hotmail.com, one of the first free web-based e-mail service, was started by Sabeer Bhatia and Jack Smith in 1996. Viral marketing is more powerful than third-party advertising because it conveys an implied endorsement from a friend and family. Hotmail grew its subscriber base from zero to 12 million users in 18 months, and today the number of Hotmail subscribers worldwide has exceeded 65 million. Moreover, Hotmail became the largest email provider in several countries, like Sweden and India.

We were amazed at how quickly Hotmail spread over the global network. The rapid adoption pattern was that of a network virus. People typically send e-mails to their associates and friends, both geographically close and scattered around. Therefore, people signed up the Hotmail service by the thousands each day.

Don't try this with your new iPhone3G!!!!!

This is the experiment done by Mr. Tom Dickson to show the strength of the blender produced by his company- Blendtec. Through the experiment, they are aimed to increase the brand awareness of the products.

Although it seems very crazy, foolish and the production of the video was plain, it creates a great response in the public because it attracted 6 million views on YouTube within a week and the online sales of Blendtec grew by 500% since the launch of video series. Also, there was a time when search term for 'iPhone' will put video of Tom Dickson blending the product before the Apple website!

The success factor of this viral marketing camping is that they choose the hot-item-iPhone3G as the key role of their experiment so that it can associate the popularity of iPhone3G to their blender.

Till now Mr. Dickson has blended iPhone, iPod, glow sticks, marbles, a golf club and a Halo3 computer games. If you have interests to such experiments performed by Mr. Dickson, please visit http://willitblend.com/ for more information. Finally, don't neglect the power of viral marketing.

Super Chemeleon - Amazing! Change Colours within 10s

This is a widespread internet video. A little chemeleon will change the skin colour into the sunglass colour when it crawls on the sunglass in 10s.

In the video, a little funny chemeleon is crawling on the table. Someone then put various colours of sunglasses and let the funny chemeleon crawling on them. The magical chemeleon will change its skin colour in 10s. When it crawls on different colours sunglasses at the same time, its skin colour will be gradually changed little by little effect.

The video has been uploaded in "You Tube" for nearly 3 months, over 1 million views are counted. When take a search further, it is found that "NeverHide" is the theme of video and it is a Viral Marketing. The Sunglasses under the claws of the chemeleon are the latest "Ray Ban" series in 2009.

I would like to share other "Never Hide" Series Viral Marketing videos with you.

Ronadinho - Touch of Gold (Nike)

This is the coolest viral video clip I have ever seen in terms of viral marketing! Ronaldinho takes delivery of a new pair of Nike boots and spends over 2 minutes demonstrating the most amazing football skills I have ever seen.

Wow! 23.5 million people have watched this ad on YouTube. Pure genius.

Other tips for Viral Marketing

How an idea spreads and how to make it spread faster is what Viral Marketing all about. One of the keys to success is creativity and intiating added value. The message should be creative enough to develop "buzz". A sense of 'shared value' which relates to share experiences can make the message valuable. Incentives and free offerings for referrals also help to motivate the spreading of the message. A viral campaign requires a clever, highly informative or even a shocking idea which makes compulsive viewing and encourages people to pass it on.

Justin Kirby of viral marketing specialists DMC (http://www.dmc.co.uk/) suggents three things:
- Creative material – the 'viral agent': This includes the creative message or offer, and how

it is spread (text, image, video)
- Seeding: identifying websites, blogs or people to start the virus spreading
- Tracking: to monitor the effect, to assess the return from the cost of developing the viral

agent and seeding.

It seems that viral marketing is not sufficiently controlled and is a rather haphazard process. However, it still requires some degree of strategic planning to motivate people to act.

Viral Marketing's history and development

The history of Viral Marketing is as old as word-of-mouth sales talk. Technology has created an intense expansion of such old concept to develop the Viral Marketing.(www.womma.org/wom101) The term "Viral Marketing" was first coined in 1997 in a Netscape newsletter. It was defined as "network-enhanced word-of-mouth".

As far as the Internet is concerned, Viral Marketing has its roots in free e-mail services and the appending advertising for themselves to outgoing mail from their users. The assumption is that if such an ad reaches a user, he will become "infected" and then go on to infect other users. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viral_marketing/) The classic Viral Marketing campaign started with the Hotmail free e-mail service. It attaches a simple tag at the bottom of every free message sent out: "free email at www.hotmail.com" .

Other similar campaigns on the Web gradually appeared in the form of Viral Marketing like Hotmail did, such as ICQ. Another example of Viral Marketing is the viral broadcasts. A well-know use of Viral Marketing to promote the "buzz" about a film was the 1999 campaign, The Blair Witch Project. It used websites and chat rooms to create a high degree of interest prior to the release of the film.

Today, accompanied by the technology development, techniques used to avoid recording TV ads may one of the incentives for more viral marketing because marketers feel their traditional commercials are ignored.

Viral Marketing's Advantages and Disadvantages

Low costs, extensive reach, high credibility, high efficiency that brings a very quick impact at a relatively low cost is the key driver for marketers wishing to use viral marketing.

Viral marketing can be the remedy against today's technological devices which designed for avoiding recording TV Ads. Besides, the message used for viral marketing has less restriction than that of the traditional Ads which enable greater creativity on creating the viral messages.

However, there are also a lot of disadvantages, such as brand dilution, association with unknown groups, lack of control, limited possibility of segmentation, and spam issues.

Brand dilution is that viral marketing depends on people who are not versed in your brand to do the "selling" for you. Due to the easy and massive proliferations of messages, damage can be enormous if the message is negatively perceived. It may result in misinterpretations and distort the creator's original intent, or make the communication brandless.

Sometimes it may difficult to control. If the message is passed to someone who is not supposed to be associated with, the viral message would then be perceived as spam and lead to damage to the company's reputation and image.

Besides, marketers have to take the risk of losing their investment that if the message cannot go "viral" and stop transmitting.

Definition of Viral Marketing

"Viral Marketing "describes any strategy that encourages individuals to pass on a marketing message to others, creating the potential for exponential growth in the message's exposure and influence. Like viruses, such strategies take advantage of rapid multiplication to explode the message to thousands, to millions." quoted by Dr. Ralph F. Wilson originally published on Web Marketing Today.

Based on the above definition, we understand that the term "viral marketing" is offensive. The marketing message will be disseminated to everyone with a low cost through using internet. When off the internet, it's also defined as "word-of-mouth" marketing. It seems like to produce the sounds or create some gimmicks through online PR or online advertising and e-mail marketing to make widely known.