The document discusses viral marketing, which is defined as encouraging individuals to share a marketing message with others to create exponential growth in exposure. It notes that word-of-mouth recommendations carry more weight than advertising. Viral marketing uses techniques like incentives, puzzles, and pass-along messages in emails and social media to encourage sharing. Examples like Hotmail and Cadbury's gorilla video campaign showed viral marketing's power in rapidly growing audience and boosting sales at low cost. However, brands lose some control over messaging as it spreads online.

2. definition …
“Giving people a reason to talk about your
products and services, and making it easier for
that conversation to take place. It is the art
and science of building active, mutually
beneficial consumer-to-consumer and
consumer-to-marketer communications.”

3. 76% people are ‘more
87 % of Internet accessing
comfortable’ with a
Indians still trust
product if
recommendations from others
recommended by a
over any other kind of
friend.
advertising, making word-of-
mouth advertising the most - Reader’s Digest 2004
powerful tool in the industry.
- AC Neilson global survey - 2006
word-of-mouth by a friend carry twice
as much weight in making a purchase
decision compared to any information
from mass advertising.
GFK – one of the leading market
research firms in Germany - 2006

4. subsets …
Buzz
marketing
Viral
marketing

5. Importance (marketer’s point of view)
• Information overload
• Skepticism
• connectivity

6. CASE STUDIES
• TITAN
• WESTSIDE

7. AXE EFFECT

8. 3M

9. Viral marketing …

10. definition …
• 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.
Viral marketing is a self-propagating marketing technique.
It is spread from person to person across the Internet.
Jeffery Rayport - Harvard Business School
Steve Jurvetson - Hotmail's e-mail practice of
advertising.

11. Viral videos have expanded
from a negligible piece of the 91 percent of internet users
advertising pie to a 100 to 150 pass on viral messages to
million dollars industry atleast one friend
-research estimates - Jupiter communication (e-
marketing strategies)
83 percent of youth 55 percent of viral
visit a majority of video views are a
websites because of result of
links sent from friends recommendations

12. Campaign seeding
 “Seeding” is the act of planting the campaign with the initial group
who will then go on to spread the campaign to others.
• Email
• Online Forums (Google groups)
• Social Networks (MySpace.com, Facebook.com)
• IM (MSN, Google)
• Blogs
 Word of mouth is a decaying function.
 Viral marketing is a compounding function.

13. Playing by the element of a niche or

exclusive.
Attached a tag at the bottom of every

email sent out to others - quot;Get Your
Private, Free Email at Absolutely no money spent on

http://www.hotmail.com/” marketing
Hotmail spent a mere $50,000
 Only a few selected members were

allowed to register
12 million people signed up in the first

year and a half. The only way to sign up for the service

was through a referral sent by an
existing member
Hotmail had over 2,70,000 new

accounts being established each day
Resulted in bidding for gmail invites on

ebay

14. Reasons for growth
• Great reach
• Low costs - Pyramids can be built in a day, not years.
• High efficiency- exponential growth
• High credibility – eg. hotmail, gmail
• Cuts through the clutter of traditional advertising
• Not an interruptive technique

15. Ooops ..
Brand Control
no control over the content – eg Sony Playstation
Uncharted Growth
Spam Threats
Lost in the crowd – security threat

16. Types of viral’s
Pass-along
A message at the bottom of an e-mail or
forward that prompts the reader to pass
it. The success of this method depends
on how interesting or exciting or
believable the message is.
 Simple emails- Mazda campagin
 Face book applications
 Snapfish photo sharing
 AA insurance services campaign- argue-
mate
 Viral videos

17. Cadbury’s
Gorilla campaign for Cadburys
The spot was viewed almost 5,00,000 times
on YouTube the week after its release.
Resulted in a 9 % rise in sales of Dairy Milk
chocolate bars

18. Thakur ka inteqaam :@

19. Incentivised viral
 Offering rewards for providing someone's address.
 Matchstick was hired by Ford Canada to help launch the Zephyr line
of cars
 India Samsung X series of Notebook PCs. The campaign sought to
increase brand awareness through an online contest.
 This campaign managed to pull 50,000 participants to the site and
delivered very good results.

20. Bluffmaster
• You have won a
staggering $100,000.
• Net result: A total of
30,000 users
participated in this
campaign, and sent
it to another 78,000
people.

21. Undercover A.K.A Stealth Marketing
A viral message presented as quot;cluesquot;, such as graffiti appearing in cities
with key viral words to direct people to search out the presented
quot;mysteryquot;.
Jassi Jasi koi nahi-
“Waiting for Jassi” - banners
People going to malls
chanting “Jassi Jassi”.
Dighen Verma
Iris- halo gaming.

22. the Batman story …

23. SMS trail … …
VANILLA COKE
Wakau campaign.
4,40,000 SMS responses in four weeks
XBOX
users could win wireless keyboard and mouse by
forwarding the SMS with the XBOX offer to their
friends.

24. References
• e marketing strategies – Frank Fiore
• e marketing excellence - P R Smith and Dave Chaffea
• The Anatomy of a Buzz – Emauel Rossen
• www.advertising - Alastair Cambell
• http://www.womma.org ( word of mouth marketing
association)