Getting people to talk about your brand isn't necessarily hard, but getting them to say something positive is.
We all know that when everything is going right no one has anything to say but when something goes wrong, everyone has an opinion.
Old school word of mouth marketing (WOMM) entailed a consumer telling their friends about a product, positive or not. The growth of the internet as a media tool has elevated WOMM to include blogs, viral and social media.
Viral marketing is a method of marketing that relies on consumers passing on information to others. When done properly, viral marketing can mean a marketer has access to media outlets for their brand that may otherwise not be reached.
A great example I came across of viral marketing is a video for American street clothing company Ecko. The video shows two people breaking into an airfield and spraying the words 'still free' onto air-force one, the presidents plane.
This video was seeded on several websites and was soon spread all over the web, blowing up on social media websites and news websites all over the world.
The success of the viral marketing campaign was phenomenal, giving the clothing brand much street cred as people thought the video was the real deal.
Despite the success of the campaign, its worth is debatable. Ecko CEO Mark Ecko said himself that making the video, which included hiring a plane and painting it to look like air-force one, was very expensive.
So what seemed like a cool stunt that attracted mass amount of attention was in fact a very expensive advertising campaign.
What is so cool about viral marketing is that you can reach consumers with entertaining content and before they realize it is an ad they have watched it 10 times and emailed it to everyone in their contact list, thats the kind of exposure that marketers dream of.
You can check out the Ecko viral marketing ad here.
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