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.