“Let’s set up a good little virus campaign” – often said at Brain-storming meetings. Virus-marketing can indeed be an excellent tool, but only if it is done really well.
A good example is the international Toplist on the ratings of virus videos. This clearly demonstrates that those campaigns that turned out to be really successful were those where the content itself was rather entertaining, awareness-raising or even a little shocking, but still included that little “plus” that makes people want to share it with others.
It is also important to note that these were usually not the cheap hand camera solutions, they show thorough and meticulous work, or in the case of T-Mobile great organisational skills in connection with the FlashMob event.
Virus videos usually get a little “help” to reach as many people as possible in a very short time. This process is called Seeding, where the virus is “hinted at” on video sharing, community and forum sites; this content is “placed” by people well-known and generally accepted by the online community (in better cases opinion leaders) into chats, even asking the opinions of others.
In many cases the company that carries out the Seeding does not indicate to the advertiser that the TV spot on its own may not be suitable for this role, thus the expected impact is not realised and after the given number of displays undertaken by the company performing the seeding, the virus “dies”. It has also occurred that this content has been anonymously forwarded on the community sites, in which case they are considered as spam – putting even the advertiser into an awkward position.
Fortunately there are also counter examples, where either support is provided in making the virus film itself or the film is awarded points based on various aspects in order to improve results, with advice associated with the content and other issues provided.
In Hungary this area is still a bit in its infancy, however the Santa example of the Pepsi crisis two years ago shows how it can be executed really successfully. In spite of it resembling the activity of the Dexter or Barack Obama virus, the timing, the relevant topic and the interaction embedded in a video made the campaign highly successful.
