Communities Create Viral Marketing

Mar
21

Viral Marketing Image

I attended a session at the New Communications Forum a few weeks ago called “Viral Marketing – It’s the message, not the Media” facilitated by Susan Getgood and a few others. Susan’s message intrigued me the most as she discussed the 5 C’s of Viral Marketing: community, compelling, comedy, charity, and contest.

Of course, these 5 C’s make total sense to me not only as a marketer, but as a consumer as well. We all know that viral marketing in the social media space is all about communities. In fact, I would argue that communities play a larger role than most people think, both online and offline. They can build a brand, kill a brand, make a career, break a career, influence elections, etc. Think about it; from an offline perspective, life is community driven through PTA organizations, church groups, sports leagues, stay-at-home mommy groups, and various school organizations (sororities, fraternities) to name a few. And of course online, you have Myspace, Facebook, Linkedin, Digg, Stumbledupon and hundreds of other social media sites jumping in the scene daily. Within each of these online/offline communities consumers are talking and having conversations with each other. And, they are sharing opinions, experiences, advice, recommendations and commentary about products, services and companies usually based on real personal experience. This is viral marketing.

The challenge with viral marketing is that it’s not always viral, if that makes any sense. Often, marketers plan for and label their marketing plans as “viral” but 9 times out of 10, it never catches on. It’s the things that just happen by accident that become viral. Remember the Diet Coke and Mentos video? At first, Coca-Cola distanced themselves from the exploding Diet Coke and Mentos viral video phenomenon, fearing it would damage their reputation and brand; however, just recently that have fully embraced the concept and now there are over 7,000 consumer generated videos on Youtube, millions of pageviews, hundreds of comments, and favored by thousands of fans. The community here is not only the millions of Youtube enthusiasts, but also the micro-communities of people and their offline conversations about these videos.

Technorati Tags: newcommforum, social media, viral marketing, diet coke and mentos, susan getgood

Author: Michael Brito

Michael Brito is a Vice President of Social Media at Edelman Digital. All thoughts and opinions on this blog are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of his employer or clients; neither past or present. Feel free to follow him on Twitter or subscribe to this blog.

Viral Marketing

@Michael Brito. Google has over 100 algorithms that determine serps, anchor text is just one. But perhaps I'm not linking for the sake of google. ;-)

As for the 3 C's, they are military in nature. But in advertising, war strategies are often employed and Sun Tzu is a well known corporate tool. If all warfare is based on deception, then terms like Guerrilla Marketing in a corporate or small business setting should be no surprise.

Deceptive forms of marketing will always persist. Look at food boxes like cereal for example, you will notice that some brands keep their prices lower and make it a point to advertise this. Yet if you look carefully, you will see that the measure of food in the boxes has decreased. One might argue, that's not deception, just read the information box. Yet, it's not entirely honest either.
Michael Brito

love the anchor text..but Google places little value in anchor text in the comment name field. I know of a guy who can rank you well for that and related terms. He's really good. Let me know.

those C's scare me from a transparent perspective; almost like you'd *not you personally* would be trying to decieve the community.
Viral Marketing

Interesting, in Guerrilla marketing there are 3 C's, Cover, Concealment, and Camouflage.
David

I think you nailed right it on the head when you say sometime a successful viral campaign was not originally planned to become a viral product. Per example Hotmail is one of the most successful viral success ever created, just because they thought of adding a simple signature on every outgoing e-mails asking the reader to subscribe to the free service. The real danger as a marketer is overdoing the message, and risk appearing as phony by the community.
gayathriherath

Has anyone out there heard about WideCircles.com. It seems like a way better service then wasting money on PPC. Apparently they are using refering websites ( forums, blogs, wiki, etc. ) and have a viral word of mouth distributed approach to it. My friend told me he got around 100 visits from single post which cost him $0.40c. I am going to give them a try today . In case you are intrested here is it.
Mike

Viral marketing is similar in nature to a contagious disease, in the way it spreads. However, it's always beneficial to the business conducting the campaign. Because this type of marketing is so cost-effective, you get more for each advertising dollar you expend. Information about your product spreads naturally, so that almost everyone hears about it in a relatively short time frame.
Martin

When a good product goes viral it flies, you cannot beat a product that sells itself (compelling), coupled with a bit of humour. The internet has made it possible to share and distribute with ease, the power is now with communities online to share opinions, ideas, products and experience. You can buy, sell, invest, make money, go broke, befriend, make enemies, find love, get your heart broke all online. While the net goes viral with Web 2.0 we wait for Web 3.0 Total Immersion.
Julie

I was also at the NewCommForum. Which sessions did you attend? I work in PR so I mostly attended the PR tracks.
Christian

"The community here is not only the millions of Youtube enthusiasts, but also the micro-communities of people and their offline conversations about these videos."

Excellent point. I have never thought of it in these terms. The community element to marketing is vital and I don't think that many marketers understand this. At least, not yet.
SamanthaCherley

Companies can't work with communities because they now rely on the virtual environment where "all" communities have access to information. You can't just direct your campaign on a single community because you might loose important customers from other communities. You have to work on a multicultural level and you have to be very flexible with content.

Samantha Cherley - blairrewards
George C.

Hi Michael, Good post, thanks for sharing. good work.
Michael Brito

Mary - I didn't say that communities alone can build a brand. I simply said that communities CAN build a brand.

Thanks for stopping by.

Michael
Mary

I am not sure if I totally agree with you. It takes more than a community to build a brand (i.e capital, a great product, superior customer service).