Example: Jurm, a Bollywood Movie
A first-of-its-kind venture, Jurm’s release ushered into the country the concept of using mobile games as promotional tools for films. The game required piecing together a puzzle to uncover the stills of stars of the movie in the least amount of tries to score the highest. This helped register and establish the brand—the movie—throughout the game. The advergame finally culminated in a ‘Meet the Stars’ contest that awarded the winner an evening with the stars of the film.
The game was made available to the subscribers of the Reliance India Mobile network, where it clocked about 150,000 downloads on the first day of its launch; the figure reaching 500,000 downloads by the end of the week. Jurm was a milestone in breaking the popular myth that Mobile gaming is an urban phenomenon; the larger part of the download figures came from the smaller towns. This advergame helped take Jurm to the remotest nooks and corners of India and gather the required publicity before the release.
Upbeat about the potential of the Mobile advergame to promote the movie, the client said that they were thrilled to be a part of the advergaming venture. Promoting Jurm through the breakthrough medium of mobile phones made its publicity very different from the usual promotions. It was a unique approach and it was soon expected to catch up as a potent promotional tool for films.
Example: Thums Up Everest Challenge
Thums Up Everest Challenge is the first Mobile advergame in India to be used as a part of a brand promotion campaign. This game spiced up the unique action-packed campaign Thums Up Everest Challenge - ‘Hai Dum?’ Considering Thums Up’s association with adventure and extreme sports and its popularity among the youth as an energizer, the game was based upon a rock climbing mission. Designed to deliver the ultimate purpose of brand establishment and recall, the advergame challenged the players to undertake a virtual hike and claim their bottle of Thums Up at the summit while collecting points. The gameplay was thrilling yet simple and required a mix of speed and precision to win the grand prize—a Royal Enfield Thunderbird!
Besides stimulating gameplay, Thums Up Everest Challenge was also popular for the weekly prizes awarded to the high scorers. This was made possible through a unique Leader board feature wherein the players could upload their scores on the server. This feature, a technical challenge in itself, was met successfully ensuring that the top scores for the day, week, or month could be accessed seamlessly.
Thums Up Everest Challenge was made available to the ten million subscribers of the Reliance India Mobile network and saw more than 350,000 downloads a week—a testimony of the countrywide popularity the advergame helped Thums Up achieve.
Websites and Microsites
This platform is being extensively used to build small online communities to bring together likeminded product users, get feedback on the usage of product, increase brand interaction with the consumer, generate trials, announce launch of new products and run sales promotions in an inexpensive way.
Social Networks and Forums
As interactive marketing is expanding in scope and reach, an emerging feature is the growth of interactions and dialogs, not only between the firm and the consumer, but also among consumers, particularly through online social networks. MySpace.com and Facebook.com are just the prominent examples of these conversational platforms, but the phenomenon is more pervasive. Firms are “listening in” to these dialogs and are increasingly customizing their Web sites and multiple device interfaces to the needs of the users and are opening up opportunities to interact across multiple channels.
Community Building
Brands are trying to bring together current and potential users on a platform hosted by the brand itself in order to increase interaction with the customers. This helps the brand understand the user preferences, behavior patterns, consumption habits and other areas information that relate the brand with the customer. The idea is to try and develop a culture around the brand, presenting them as style statements. Often, it also helps the brand gauge its own perception in the market, and also keep in touch with the nerve of the market. Regular members of the site who like it may actually become informal brand ambassadors and the viral effect of an interesting marketing campaign can move fast through social networks.
Examples of Community Building
sunsilkgangofgirls.com: This online community for users of Sunsilk products, in the form of a social network where the users can share ideas and tips on varied topics including personal care, beauty tips, hangout zones and even jobs.
i-blushed.com: Pond's fun filled microsite for their new skincare product line ‘White Beauty’ all-woman, asking women to share their Blush Moments. It is an attempt to communicate with the users and strike an emotional cord as blushing is normally associated with intimate events in girls’ lives.
spillurdil.com: An online community developed by Kwality Walls around its Cornetto brand. The target group is young boys and girls and the concept is built around dating and matters of the heart. The tangible outcomes in terms of site activity and user base may not accurately reflect the returns, but the site augments the brand positioning of Cornetto really well.
pepsizone.yahoo.co.in: A platform to showcase the Pepsi culture, to share for cool stuff, wallpapers, music and other such things - a move to again interact with its customers and youth at large.
myenjoyzone.com: Coke’s side of the culture building story, with similar objectives as in the case above.
Product Promotion and Trial Generation
Running a campaign for the web savvy young generation has picked up as a trend across brands in different product categories and fairly successfully at that.
Example: Acuvue Contact Lenses
Company Profile: J&J Vision Care, a division of Johnson & Johnson, is the world's leading marketer of Disposable Contact Lenses under the Acuvue brand.
Business Requirement: J&J Vision Care wanted to generate trials for its Acuvue Disposable Contact Lenses in a cost-effective and one-to-one mode.
Solution: As J&J Vision Care's interactive agency, Indigo Consulting worked with the client to design an innovative E-Trials programme. The programme covered the entire cycle of online customer acquisition, registration & service delivery, as well as powerful reporting & MIS features. It comprised customization and deployment of the Acuvue website & CRM software, using which visitors could register for a trial, schedule an appointment with an Eye-care Practitioner (ECP), and print-out a redemption coupon. ECPs in turn, could view their appointments and provide feedback on the trials. J&J Vision Care could also view and download customer and ECP reports. An online advertising and DM campaign was also launched which covered high traffic sites like Yahoo, Rediff & Indiatimes.
Results: While the actual product trial takes place at pre-selected Eye-care Practitioners (ECPs), the programme uses the Internet effectively to facilitate the trial process for both, the customer, as well as the ECP. Fulfillment and subsequent purchase is also tracked through the Internet closing the loop on measurability and ROI.
Example: Domino’s Pizza
Objective: Domino's wanted to reach out to the cosmopolitan Chennai audience in a market affected by CAS (Conditional Access System). It wanted to reach out to those consumers who could not watch their campaign on special interest channels since these were pay channels and had very few subscribers. It had to generate awareness for its special offer for Chennai.
The Solution: Communication had to be targeted only to Chennai. www.chennaionline.com was chosen because of its focused traffic and cost effectiveness in this low budget campaign. The special offer of 'Meal for 2 for Rs 150' was promoted only through www.chennaionline.com to measure effectiveness of the exercise & hence the medium. The homepage shoshkele was used for maximum impact.
The Route: A regular homepage shoshkele would simply state the offer upfront and ask the consumer to call Domino's immediately. However, it chose to do a 4-week campaign in 2 parts. The first week began with a teaser that let the consumer uncover what the offer is all about, followed by more direct communication in the subsequent weeks.
The teaser used an intriguing initial question in order to captivate the target audience. An old mental math puzzle was used with a modern twist, as South Indians are known for their liking to mathematics. It finally led to the offer. The consumer had to complete the interaction within the banner itself. The following weeks simply reinforced the message since the website had a dedicated audience who would have seen the teaser in the first week.
Results: Over 700 pizzas were sold. This offer was promoted only through the online medium. No other media were used and there was no mention of this offer on the menu at retail outlets.
Customer Data
To date, the audience to whom advertising has been directed has been defined in bulk terms -i.e. adults, teens, households, women 18 to 49, men 25 to 34. When dealing with the mass media the mass audience was packaged and sold by the "cost-per-thousand” and by "gross rating points." However, measuring interactive communication is a lot more involved and detailed.
Interactive technology will generate a virtually endless stream of consumer information. Instantly a marketer will know what individuals are interested in his product. Within seconds of any inquiry, the advertiser can respond to each and every consumer's unique set of questions and needs. The sale can be closed before the consumer ever even encounters a competitor's product on the shelf.
In the process, a large amount of data is generated for marketing experts to sort through and analyze. Detailed buyer profiles present a different information technology challenge than that produced by massaging reams of transaction records from supermarket checkout scanners or telemarketing centers.
The standard demographic descriptors of the audience will need to be supplemented with a combined index of general demographic measures (i.e. age, sex, income, education, etc.) and specific measurements of an individual's ownership and use patterns of interactive technologies. Thus, traditional demographic market segments, like women 18 to 49, can be further defined by their access to and amount of time spent with any given interactive technology. These measurements are better described in the interview section that follows.
The future of interactive marketing
The nature and contours of the advertising message itself is expected to drastically change. As we move from the mass -to the multi-mediated world of interactive communication at least four predictions can be made regarding its impact on the character and contours of the commercial message itself.
- The commercial message will become multi-dimensional and transactional. A change from one-way, truncated 30 second spots, 1/2 page spreads and 7-word billboard blurbs to interactive advertising-pods will help convey a lot more product information, while the consumer provides the advertiser with information on his/her preferences measured by the pages he/she visits, the time spent on each etc.
- The commercial message will move from intrusive commercial messages that intermittently interrupt the on-going media experience of the consumer to invited conversation, wherein the consumer actively seeks out and requests advertising and promotional materials. Advertisers will offer polite invitations designed to initiate or continue individual customer dialogues. Starting a dialogue, either with a current customer or with a potential new customer, will be the primary goal of any marketer hoping eventually to sell products or services. Advertisers will no longer find it beneficial to irritate viewers into remembering their brands. Not only is this a bad way to begin a dialogue, but it is very likely that in the interactive future a consumer who feels irritated with a certain ad or brand will be capable of forbidding that brand from appearing on his own set again.
- The Commercial message will be less peripheral and more involving with information being part and parcel with the program with which the individual is interacting.
- Finally, in terms of style and substance, the "commercial" message will move from glib and superficial titillation with intangible rewards to substantive value-added "infotainment" with immediate and tangible rewards. The interactive ads of the future will have to offer consumers something real and something tangible for their time and attention.
The very nature of the advertising business has been to inform consumers about "new and/or improved" products in an entertaining way. The expanded frontiers and contours of the new media allow the advertiser to expand the commercial message with much more information and content and enable the consumer to actively participate in the process.
Interactive ads can evolve into compelling direct-response environments - informative, intimate, and immediate. The point is simple: Games are dual purpose - they create compelling experiences and get customers even more involved with the product. Coca-Cola, Toys R Us, PepsiCo, and Nabisco may all ultimately design games to imprint their products onto the neurons of their younger customers. Similarly, Chrysler or Toyota might develop virtual reality driving games for adolescents and adults to promote their cars.
Viral Marketing
Before penicillin was invented, Syphilis was a feared disease in America at the beginning of the 20th century. At the same time, R.J.Reynolds Tobacco Company was one of the leading firms with its Camel brand leading the way. Rival brands resorted to counter advertising in face of the intense competition.
The strategy was simple. Two ‘strangers’ would enter a pharmaceutical store and start discussion about Reynold’s cigarettes. The dialogue would then proceed to how smoking Camel brand leads to Syphilis. The dialogue would be picked up by the bystanders and the fear relayed to other folks. In absence of radio or other quick mass media to disprove the fears, this worked.
Well, techniques may have changed but the idea remains pretty much the same. It is the time when viral marketing is in vogue. Viral marketing was a term originally coined by venture capitalist Steve Jurvetson to describe the unique referral-marketing program created by Hotmail, one of the first free e-mail services.
Definition
Viral marketing is one of the most effective forms of interactive marketing. Viral marketing refers to techniques that use pre-existing to produce increases in awareness, through self-replicating processes, analogous to the spread of and . It can be delivered or enhanced by the network effects of the Internet. Viral marketing is a marketing phenomenon that facilitates and encourages people to pass along a marketing message voluntarily.
The following points throw light on the difference between traditional form of marketing and viral marketing.
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Success bares no relation to investment – While in traditional marketing there is generally a relationship between the money spent and number of people viewing the message, there is no such relationship in viral marketing.
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Viral marketing does not have a timeline - Traditional marketing calendars, and even the traditional marketing plan is irrelevant when executing and responding to viral marketing efforts. Viral marketing is just not that predictable, which calls for a different kind of planning.
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Number of views bare little relation to reach or impact of viral marketing - As viral is something that is shared from person to person, one can be sure that many more people hear about it than view it.
The science behind Viral marketing
Induction of a Viral growth is both an “art” and “science”. The science component relates to the ability to calculate the reach and systematically measure all aspects of user response to viral campaigns. This lets iterative refinements of features and experience to boost propagation rates. The “art” component relates to the fact that the campaign should (a) be logically consistent with a brand’s primary value proposition and (b) resonate with something fundamental in the audience’s psyche.
Success of a viral marketing program depends on the marketers’ ability to identify individuals with high Social Networking Potential (SNP) and formulate marketing messages that appeal to this segment of the population and have a high probability of being passed along.
It is claimed that a satisfied customer tells an average of three people about a product or service he/she likes, and eleven people about a product or service which he/she did not like. Viral marketing is based on this natural human behavior.
Growth of Viral
When a Viral message reaches a "susceptible" user, the user will become "infected" (e.g. sign up for an account) and will pass the Viral by infecting other susceptible users. As long as the basic reproductive rate is greater than one , i.e. each infected user passes on the message to more than one susceptible user on average, epidemiology tells us that the number of infected users will grow according to a logistic curve, whose initial segment appears exponential.
A logistic function or logistic curve models the S-curve of growth of some set P. The initial stage of growth is approximately exponential; then, as saturation begins, the growth slows, and at maturity, growth stops.
Thus it is hoped that a Viral campaign will generate positive word-of-mouth (WOM). There are 9 levels of word-of-mouth. They range from the public scandal of minus 4, the product boycott of minus 3, to the raving customers/advocates who tell you how great your product or service is (plus 3) to the “talk of the town” level (plus 4).
Reed's law
As per Reed's law the utility of large networks, particularly social networks, can scale exponentially with the size of the network. The reason for this is that with N number of participants the number of possible sub-groups of network participants is 2N- N -1. This grows much more rapidly than either
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the number of participants, N, or
- the number of possible pair connections, N(N-1)/2 (which follows Metcalfe’s Law)
Thus even if the utility of groups available to be joined is very small on a per-group basis, eventually the network effect of potential group membership can dominate the overall economics of the system. Viral encashes on this network effect.
SNP [Social Networking Potential]
It is a numeric coefficient derived through algorithms to represent both the size of an individual's social network and their ability to influence that network. SNP coefficients have two primary functions:
- Classification of individuals based on their Social Networking Potential, and
- Weighting of respondents in quantitative marketing research studies.
Calculation of the SNP of respondents and targeting High SNP respondents enhances the strength & relevance of quantitative marketing research used to estimate the relative potential of a number of different strategies. This helps decide which form of communication and media is most likely to be forwarded through social networks.
Following variables influence calculation of an individual's SNP: participation in Social Networking activities, group memberships, publication/editing/contributing to non-electronic and electronic media (websites, blogs), and frequency of past distribution of information within their network, leadership roles, recognition.
e.g. If Wills Lifestyle were to create “buzz” for a new line of products, they would have to produce a number of video clips that have differing emotional appeals (casual, vibrant, fun, sexy). By targeting High SNP individuals, exposing them to the video clips, and measuring the extent to which they are influenced by each, an optimal viral marketing strategy can be identified.
Types of Viral Messages
This includes funny video clips, interactive games, , images, , e-mails, ebooks, free greeting cards, interactive websites, blogs, vlogs, podcasts and hosts of other innovative forms.
1. Pass-along
A message at the bottom of an e-mail that prompts the reader to pass it along (e.g. chain letters). The message would be successful depending on how interesting, believable and exciting it is.
2. Incentivized viral
Offering rewards for providing someone's address can dramatically increase referrals. However, this is most effective when the offer requires another person to take action. Most online contests offer more chances of winning for each referral given.
3. Undercover/Stealth Marketing
A viral message presented as a cool or unusual page, activity or piece of news, without obvious incitements to link or pass-along. Particular effort is made to make the discovery of the item seem spontaneous and informal, to encourage natural memetic behavior. Outside world "clues", such as graffiti appearing in cities with key viral words, is often used to direct people to search out the presented "mystery".
4. Edgy gossip/Buzz Marketing
Ads or messages that create controversy by challenging the borders of taste or appropriateness. Discussion of the resulting controversy can be considered to generate buzz and word of mouth advertising. Prior to releasing a movie, some Hollywood movie stars become involved in some controversy that directs conversational attention towards them.
Execution of Viral Marketing
The execution of viral marketing is an interesting area of study. This is one area where set norms and ways of doing things do not work. One brand may execute its marketing campaign in a particular way and this strategy will most definitely, not succeed for another brand. Therefore, the following would constitute the execution part of any viral marketing campaign.
Experiment
Viral Marketing should be treated as an innovation exercise and the focus should be on building a portfolio of social media experiments. Sharing messages through blogs, vlogs, podcasts, widgets, social networks; tools that are easy to engage with and are easily shared. The themes and ideas could be as radically innovative as possible.
Monitor
Social media put a plethora of tools in marketers' hands that allow real time measurement and monitoring of ideas in the marketplace: knowing what ideas are being shared, and what ideas are taking off. Monitoring is not just about measurement though, it's about listening and paying attention to the conversations, responses, and mashups that give a rich source to draw from and respond.
Respond
With the things taking off, response, participation and engagement in the ensuing conversation is critical. Capitalizing and reflecting on what is happening is the key to a good response.
Viral Players
Though an attempt was made to find a trend in the nature of firms adopting Viral Marketing, no specific patterns were found. The companies using Viral campaigns varied from FMCG to automobiles, IT products to Travel agencies. Mary Kay Cosmetics and Amway, brands that relied on social networks to inform potential customers about their products, used this technique with great success to build highly recognizable brands. Viral marketing, emails have been one of the most feasible and effective tools especially to those who have small business, those who are still new in the business, or any ventures that faces budget constraints for their promotions or marketing.
An attempt was next made to identify the major firms involved in designing Viral campaigns in India. Following are the major players in this field in India:
- Webchutney
- BC Web Wise
- Interactive Avenue
- Quasar Media
- neo@Ogilvy
- TribalDDB (Mudra Group)
Webchutney has already worked on several successful viral campaigns. Notable among them being the campaigns executed for Microsoft’s Outlook and Make My Trip. Results for some of the campaigns are discussed later.
The target group for such campaigns remains essentially net savvy people oriented towards using various social networks. Like the larger marketing strategy, viral marketing should be used only after considering the characteristics of the target audience, the nature of the industry that the company is in, the qualities of the marketing message, technological, and other considerations.
Some popular examples
Microsoft Outlook 2007
This viral for Microsoft Outlook 2007 was a spoof on a very popular Indian song about a love letter arriving after a long time. The singer (imitating Pankaj Udhas) goes on repeating the first line which says “bade dino ke baad" until someone from the audience throws a shoe at him. After which he completes the line and says “chitthi aayi hai." The original song is a rueful one and in the ad Webchutney spoofs the same sentiment to convey the nightmare of lost or forever delayed emails that we all go through.
Viral was launched on 3th Dec 2006. It was promoted through publishers (banner ads) on Rediff, Yahoo and Indiatimes. The seeding for the viral was done through various channels like Orkut, Youtube and personal networks besides the regular display ads. The viral got mention in various blogs and networking communities which shows its popularity.
Performance Summary
- Clicks from Publishers : 171,947
- Page Views : 380,678
- Unique Visitors : 288,583
- Total Visits : 311,095
- Trackable Forwards : 27,657
The view to clicks ratio is 2.2 which reflects the viral effect.
Nokia’s Snake Outbreak
Nokia created a "Snake Outbreak" at its gaming site, N-Gage to create buzz around its mobile Snake's new colourful, fast paced 3-D avatar. The site (http://www.n-gage.com/snakes/main.jsp) envisions a world plagued by snakes and visitors could manipulate the reptile and save the world thus generating renewed interest in the game. There were free downloads, SMS and email links to spread the game.
Hotmail
One of the best examples of Internet viral marketing till date is Hotmail. Hotmail was the first to offer a free email service. Every outgoing message from this platform contained an advertisement for Hotmail and a link to its website at the bottom of the email. The message spread within existing social networks and the results were phenomenal. Spending less than $500k on marketing, advertising, and promotion, Hotmail went from company launch to 12 million users in less than a year and a half - eventually to be taken over by Microsoft.
Burger King
Burger King's Subservient Chicken campaign was launched to promote a range of chicken sandwiches. A website was created that featured a man dressed in a giant chicken suit who responded to the commands typed in by visitors. The tag line was "Have it your way". The site soon caught up on the fascination of people and within a week. The website had received an astonishing 15 million hits in first 5 days!
Lenovo
Preceding Lenovo computers’ purchase of IBM Hardware a buzz was generated on forums in the global tech community about a new supercomputer. Three Viral videos were designed and each of the three tapes was viewed over 1.2 million times on the network. This received front page coverage on the influential gadget blog, engadget.com. All three clips made the homepage on YouTube. It received mass media coverage on blogs and forums about the campaign and from 0 to 2,140,000 Google returns for the search phrase “Lenovo Tapes”
Present trends in India & Global arena
Last few years have seen a plethora of social networking sites of likes of Orkut come up. This in combination of various mailing groups make the social network based marketing stronger than ever before.
Importance of You Tube & Video as viral format
As per the research by HitWise, Online marketers wanting to hit big with a viral marketing campaign must include YouTube in the campaign. YouTube's market share is found to be greater than any other online video platform. YouTube's market share increased 70% from January 2007 to May 2007. According to a report from eMarketer, video advertising will grow about 89% in 2007, to reach $775 million. And, by 2011 advertisers can expect to see even more online revenue from online video as the spend is expected to see a sustained growth rate of about 40% to reach about $4 billion by 2011. As per the report:
“Video's high engagement factor, combined with the Internet's tracking and targeting capabilities potentially, offers brand advertisers a highly accountable method to sway the hearts and minds of their target audience…"
3G Network in India
Launch of 3G network in India by Bharati group is set to trigger a new era of viral marketing in India. 3G networks enable access to broadband Internet and data services like video calling, movie clips and gaming on cell phones at speeds of 384 Kbps. Third-generation (3G) networks will ensure seamless convergence of wireless technology and the Internet. Mobile device manufacturers have already taken step to take advantage of this. Nokia launched its 3.5G device, N95, in April’07. Thus the service providers and mobile phone manufacturers are all set to play a vital role in spread of Viral campaigns in India.
Challenges
There has been an overwhelming rise of viral marketing campaigns in last few years. Quick adoption of this method has made the field oversaturated. The overload of information today means it will be harder for viral campaigns to stand out from the pack. Research from Burst Media indicates that users feel video ads are an intrusion (77%). Also, about 67% of users feel video ads disrupt their surfing habits.
While Viral Marketing is an appealing prospect, it’s not always easy to master. In a Silverpop Email list Growth Survey (2006), Viral Marketing was listed as the top ranked unsuccessful tactic for marketers. However, in the same survey, Viral Marketing was the top ranked tactic being planned by marketers in their next 12 months! The key to running a successful viral campaign lies in the planning, the incentive offered and the knowledge of the target audience.
Ability of the viral campaign to break monotony with innovation and relate to brand message will decide whether it defies the risk of ending in “deleted items” folder as another amusing clip. The marketers that can also evolve shall be the ones with ability to design campaigns that cut through the viral clutter. The following points should be kept in mind while developing a viral marketing campaign.
1. Gives away free products or services
Viral marketing practices are a form of ‘delayed gratification’ to the marketers. They do not receive instantaneous profits, but the later benefits are huge. The ‘free’ word attracts eyeballs and these eyeballs bring e-mail addresses, advertising revenue and sales opportunities. Therefore, most of the viral marketing programs provide free e-mail services, free ‘cool’ buttons, and free software programs besides other things.
2. Provides for effortless transfer to others
The medium that carries the marketing message must be easy to transfer and replicate: e-mail, website, graphic, software download. Viral marketing works famously on the Internet because instant communication has become so easy and inexpensive. Not only the medium, but even the message should aid easy and effortless transfer by being crisp and compelling and relevant.
3. Scales easily from small to very large
The transmission methods must be rapidly scalable in order to sustain fast growth. The weakness of Hotmail was that mail servers had to be added very quickly (each free mail required its own mail server) or the growth would fizzle out.
4. Exploits common motivations and behaviors
A marketing strategy that is built upon common behavior and motivation is usually successful. Greed, hunger to be popular, loved and understood are powerful motivators and clever marketing campaigns exploit them.
5. Reflect the Brand
The campaign should be a rigid fit with the values and personality of the brand. The relevance of the campaign should be obvious; otherwise people remember just the campaign and not the brand for which it was done.
6. Utilizes existing communication networks
Taking advantage of the existing, popular communication between people leads to rapidly multiplying its dispersion. Select local networks do not provide the same coverage and may prove to be costlier.
7. Takes advantage of others' resources
The most creative viral marketing plans use others' resources to deliver the message. Affiliate programs, for example, place text or graphic links on others' websites. Authors, who give away free articles, seek to position their articles on others' web pages. A news release can be picked up by hundreds of periodicals and form the basis of articles seen by hundreds of thousands of readers.
8. Create Sales Opportunities
Even if the viral campaign is terrific and everyone around the world views it - these views need to be turned into sales. So at the end of the campaign, or ideally within it, it should be ensured that the campaign leads to somewhere where people can buy the product. Links should be provided to online shops or vouchers that can be redeemed in stores.
"It has to have some kind of wow factor. A viral ad has to have a connection to the consumer. It has to make you laugh, make you cry, has to make you think (or) it has to say something. It's not so much about just banging on the product." Asa Bailey, U.K. based Viral Advertising Association.
Interviews with Top Interactive Marketing Agencies
As part of this project, some of the top agencies in this field were contacted over email and telephone. The main contact points were Mr. Arvind Mathur (Zapak), Mr. Chaya Brian Carvalho (MD, bcwebwise), Ms Namrata Singh (Webchutney), Mr. Andy and Ms. Nikita Tambay (both from FCB Ulka). Discussion was mainly on the expenses involved, duration of campaign, impact measurement and extent of involvement of advertising agencies. The key findings are explained in the following paragraphs:
The cost of a campaign is highly variable based on the nature and duration of the campaign. Mr. Mathur said that the costs can be defined across 3 stages (a) Development costs, (b) Hosting costs (includes gaming backend, score capturing, etc.) and (c) Cost of promotion (banners, links, etc.). Increased graphics integration would add to the costs further. Mr. Carvalho provided a breakup of the elements, with creative ranging from Rs. 50,000 to Rs. 500,000 (for elements such as ad banner, shosh/site capture, rich media campaign, Viral animation/videos, landing page, contest, contest backend, microsite/promosite). Media would cost about Rs. 3 lakhs for a 2 week campaign. This brings the monthly cost to Rs. 6-7 lakhs.
Mr. Mathur said that the length of a campaign depends on the objective to a large extent. A teaser campaign may last just a week, but some campaigns could last 3-4 months. An average campaign can be expected to last around 30 days. Mr. Carvalho said that most full-fledged campaigns last around 2-3 months.
They said that the impact is measured on different parameters for different clients. The most common parameters include the number of impressions (views), clicks, conversion ratios (leads), user engagement time, etc. An automobile manufacturer could go to the level of mapping the number of people actually turning up for test drives after experiencing the car in the game. In certain cases where a demonstration has to be shown or message has to be communicated, the mapping can be done on the basis of number of views or number of experiences. An experience is said to be complete once a user submits his feedback which could be a score or his contact details or has responded in the desired manner. Technically the number of users accessing the content can be mapped and targeted on the basis of their profile, however other forms of offline mapping is possible only on integration at the client level.
Typically agencies such as these provide end-to-end solutions. However, in some cases the interactions are managed through an advertising agency. It is finally the client’s call to decide if only one agency should be involved or multiple ones.
Mr. Andy said that the business was growing at about 80% each year due to the fact that the campaigns have a high ROI, making interactive marketing a very attractive option for clients.
Views on Viral as a medium
Mr. Carvalho agreed that Viral is very effective these days. They create impact since they are usually their funny or thought provoking and generate word-of-mouth (word-of-email with all the forwards it generates). The user is the one pushing the message and not the brand. But it runs the risk of being so good that the brand message is lost or the brand name is lost, just like a very interesting TVC where you got everything but the brand name. According to him it is becoming a preferred choice of marketing managers due to impact, image association as a cool brand, cost effectiveness – you only spend on creative execution and not buy media. It takes about 2-3 months to create noticeable impact which can be measured in the ways mentioned earlier.
Mr. Mathur felt that as long as the connect between the viral and the product is strong enough and the creative has a recall value, viral makes for an effective tool to communicate. Dilution in this could have negative effects too. It works particularly well for certain products with limitations and limited experiential attributes. To enhance the same companies do prefer to take the viral route. He believes un-usually long virals have a high dropout rate and thus a product actually goes unnoticed with a lot of inventory wasted. 30 second to 1 minute Virals are conducive to creation of a better brand recollect and impact.
Survey to assess the effectiveness of Viral Marketing Campaign
Objective
To assess the effectiveness of viral marketing by taking the case of MakeMyTrip.com.
Following areas are explored in the survey
- Ad and Brand Recall
- Audience Engagement with Content
- Audience Attentiveness and Responsiveness to Advertising
- Perceived values by audience
- “Viral” effect of this campaign
Respondent Breakout
We got a total of 100 respondents in this survey. More than 100 were not possible given the restriction imposed by online free survey sites. The breakout of these 100 respondents is as given below:
- Gender : Male – 75%; Female – 25%
- Age: 18-24 – 60%; 25-34 – 39%
- Education: Post Graduate – 64%; Bachelors degree – 31%
- Employment Status: Student – 55%; Employed full time – 34%
Survey Result
Following 2 snapshots of viral ads were shown in the beginning and ad and brand recall was tested
At this stage, following links for both the ads were given to the respondent and asked to see the ads before moving further.
Some prominent responses were
- “claim of cheapest service and paying diff is good”
- “cheap, affordable flights available for all”
- “if the dhobis can fly then even u can”
- “one stop portal to look for cheapest of all airline”
- Convenient way of booking airline tickets
- Substitute trains with flights
- Too big, boring, does not convey anything about services other that low air fare
Majority of respondents agree that
- Ad message is understandable
- Ad and the benefits of service are believable
- After viewing these ads, they would consider using the service
But they were neutral about service being different as compared to that of competitors
Majority of the respondents described ad as:
- Creative
- Humorous
- Attention-grabbing
- Different & new
- Wouldn’t mind seeing again
- Cheerful
However, a few were of the opinion that the ads were:
- Boring / Irritating
- Too long
- Waste of money
- “Seeing this ad I wonder whether people take MakeMyTrip seriously as a service company”
The Viral Effect
Based on this result, 48% people don’t forward the ad to anyone, 26% people forward the ad to 3 people (on an average), 16% forward the ad to 8 people, and so on. Therefore, 100 people in our sample size will forward the ad to 434 people.
No. of people who get the ad as forward or reference will increase as:
This proves the Viral effect stated earlier.
References
Credits
-
Mr. Arvind Mathur (Zapak)
-
Mr. Chaya Brian Carvalho (MD, bcwebwise)
-
Ms Namrata Singh (Webchutney)
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Mr. Andy and Ms. Nikita Tambay (FCB Ulka)
The Secrets of Word-of-Mouth Marketing by George Silverman
Secrets Of Word-Of-Mouth Marketing by Regine P. Azurin
Till 24th jan07; Courtesy- Webchutney