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Viral Marketing

Please prepare the lesson before talking with your tutor

Warm –up!

Moving on further into the potential of digital communication, this lesson looks at marketing and viral campaigns. Have you ever fallen prey to a viral campaign?

This is the campaign from Dove (A Company selling beauty products / soap etc)) mentioned in the text below. Please watch it. Do you think it is effective? Why? Why not?

 

Please watch Jeremy Gutsche making a keynote speech on viral marketing

Discuss the content with your tutor.

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Reading and Pronunciation Activity

Read the article with your tutor

The Secret to Viral Marketing

The ‘Kissing’ video is currently doing the rounds online, appearing in timelines on Facebook and Twitter and the front cover of newspapers such as the Huffington Post.

The tagline is potent: ‘watch 20 strangers kiss for the first time,’ and for the last few days, millions of people have been watching what they think is twenty strangers kiss for the first time.

There’s no question that in terms of creating a successful viral marketing campaign, this video ticks many of the right boxes. It’s not presented as an ad; the content is engaging and surprising, and it appeals to people’s emotional core.

There’s also no question that viewers would be shocked to discover that the video is an ad for an American clothing company and that the ‘strangers’ are actually actors.

Creating an obvious ad is one of the big no no’s when it comes to creating a viral marketing campaign and that’s why this company have gone to such lengths to disguise the video’s true purpose. Once it becomes widely known that the video is in fact an ad, it will lose its impact.

However, there are many brands that get the formula right by creating campaigns that resonate with audiences so much the audience becomes the ultimate promoter of the brand, which is of course, the key to a successful viral marketing campaign.

In 2013, the brands that excelled at successful viral marketing campaigns were Dove, Volvo, Turkish Airlines and Google, according to Visible Measures, a US-based company that tracks the online performance of branded videos and collects metrics on how audiences engage with them and share them with others.

 

 

 

 

Dove’s Real Beauty Sketches video is top of Visible Measure’s list and has achieved legendary status amongst online marketers as the most successful campaign of 2013, clocking up no less than 136 million views on YouTube.

Second place went to Turkish Airlines, with The Selfie Shootout, which depicted sports stars Kobe Bryant and Lionel Messi sending each other self-portraits from a variety of exotic locations to which the airline flies.

Third and fourth places, meanwhile, went to Volvo Trucks (with the Epic Split ad, featuring Jean-Claude van Damme) and Google (with its Chrome For campaign).

But how did these brands achieve this success? James Whatley is social media director at Ogilvy & Mather Advertising London and part of the advertising team that created Dove’s Real Beauty Sketches.

‘You may as well read an instruction manual on how to win the lottery,’ he says. ‘Yes, you might pick up a few tips, but any major success will be purely accidental.’ Purely accidental? That doesn’t bode well for those us trying to emulate Dove’s success.

‘Viral hits ride the zeitgeist, they capture the imagination,’ says Whatley – but they also ‘have significant investment behind them to ensure that enough eyes turn into enough clicks and enough shares.’

In other words, Real Beauty Sketches did not succeed on emotional resonance alone. It was also backed up by a rock-solid media planning, distribution and public relations strategy.

Allan Blair, head of strategy at digital agency Tribal Worldwide London agrees with Whatley. ‘It’s rare that content (especially branded content) gets traction without a large media spend behind it, or at least a large amount of money to kick start initial interest,’ he says.

Kate Cooper, managing director at social media agency Bloom Worldwide, takes this one step further by saying that not every company can achieve the success of big brands because they don’t have the budgets to run big campaigns.

She advises smaller companies to forget trying to go ‘viral’ and instead focus on creating ‘powerful, timely storytelling that reaches as wide an audience as possible.’

She also suggests focusing on ‘microcontent’ such as short videos, photos, polls, games and quizzes – that do not cost as much to make and can therefore be produced at greater volume.

In short, no brand should be intimidated by the big budgets of big-brand viral campaigns. There is still huge value to be gained from more modest attempts to engage with online audiences, as long as they’re timely, relevant and compelling.

   Vocabulary

Can you explain the vocabulary in bold to your tutor?

Top 5 Tips for Viral Marketing Campaigns

Do you agree with these tips?                                    Can you think of more?

  • Make People Feel Something
  • Do Something Unexpected
  • Don’t Make Ads
  • Connect with the Audience via Comments
  • Don’t Restrict Access

 

Let’s Talk! 

  1. What’s the difference between a viral marketing campaign and an advertisement?
  2. What does the text suggest that smaller companies can do to engage customers?
  3. What do you think is the key to a successful viral marketing campaign?
  4. Why do you think Dove’s campaign was so successful?
  5. Can you name a smaller brand that ran a viral campaign and achieved success?
  6. Why do you think timely and compelling content is such an important factor in viral marketing?
  7. How ethical is viral marketing? Dirty tricks or just connecting?

 

Plenary

What have you learnt this lesson?

What do you need to improve on before the next?

What do you think would be useful to do next lesson for you to progress further?

 

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