Viral Marketing - International case "Batman - The Dark Knight"

Warner Bros' clever viral marketing campaign held in 2008 for the Batman flick is definitely worthy to be included in our Viral Markting examples.

The campaign started out with a simple teaser page featuring the image of a lone bat almost a year before the movie hit the theaters. When fans clicked on the site WhySoSerious.com, they were redirected to a page that featured a District Attorney Election promotional poster for a known character from the Batman Universe named Harvey Dent. Clicking on the page sent fans to another page with another promotional poster of a mocking Harvey Dent. The image is defaced and the users were asked to enter their e-mail address so they could be given a code that would reveal a few pixels of the hidden image.

Word about the campaign immediately got around and with hours, the page became a hit on various networking sites and generated blogs and newspapers coverage.

source: firstshowing.net, SPD4290vm

Types of Viral Marketing

There are different ways to apply viral marketing strategy.

- Pass-along. This is the most common type of viral marketing. Web sites that ask their users to tell-a-friend about their products and services is an example of pass-along messaging. However, there is a risk of the message being labeled as 'spam' by email providers. Thus, it is important that the 'from' and 'subject" lines do not contain any word that may be tagged as spam.

- Incentivised viral. This is a marketing technique used by companies in which users are offered rewards when they refer somebody to the company. This becomes more effective when the referred person needs to take action for the reward to be given.

- Undercover. The most difficult viral to spot, undercover marketing sends a viral message that is disguised as just an unusual page or piece of news without obvious link citations.

- Buzz marketing. This type is most common in the entertainment world. A good example is the spread of different controversies, like getting married or divorced, involving the stars of a movie that is yet to be released. This is like a word-of-mouth advertising for the movie.

source: Internet Business Online, SPD4290vm

Viral Marketing - International case "Hotmail.com" (PART II)

The NEW Hotmail - Next generation in personal email


Hotmail is the best example of most successful viral marketing strategy over full life cycle. In 1996, a new product, free web based email was launched by Sabeer Bhatia and Jack Smith. 'Viral Marketing' catalyst was involved that would exponentially increase the rate of flow of information; nothing to do with virus but the growth is rapid like virus growth through word-of-mouth.

Impact and results of viral marketing strategy over hotmail growth can be summarized as: most important is that Hotmail grew a subscriber base more rapidly than any other company in the world.

Now, Hotmail is the largest email provider in the world. Exponential growth of subscribers; unprecedented source of personal information as almost subscribers filled up demographic and psychographic profile.

Also, with expense close to $500K spent on branding, marketing, advertising and promotion, very less was spent in comparison to nearly 12 million users. It is not just spending money, but spending money in a smart way will work. Hotmail became email king at reduced cost, less expense using viral marketing catalyst. Hotmail viral message (free email services) was involuntary and spread through word-of-mouth.

source: Ezine articles, SPD4290vm

Viral Marketing - International case "Hotmail.com" (PART I)

Hotmail.com is one of the first free web-based e-mail services. The strategy is simple:

1. Give away free e-mail addresses and services,

2. Attach a simple tag at the bottom of every free message sent out:" Get your private, free e-mail at http://www.hotmail.com/"

Here's what it looked like:

__________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at:
http://www.hotmail.com/

and,

3. Stand back while people e-mail to their own network of friends,

4. Who see the message,

5. Sign up for their own free e-mail service, and then

6. Propel the message still wider to their own ver-increasing circles of friends and associates.

Hotmail's practice was to append an advertisement of itself on each message that is sent using their service. When a recipient gets interested and clicks on the ad, it will lead to hotmail's website for him/her to signup. This will go on and on, and the growth is similar to an exponential curve.

In the first 18 months of being in business, Hotmail.com garnered 12 million subscribers with a total marketing budget of less than $500,000. That's a new customer acquisition cost of 4 cents per customer!!!

source: Xcellent marketing , SPD4290vm, hotmail.com

Definition of Viral Marketing

In Internet and online advertising viral marketing is a type of marketing technique that relies on and encourages people to pass along a marketing message by word-of-mouth (or word-of-e-mail) marketing. Viral marketing online uses blog and social networks to produce positive word-of-mouth brand awareness.

The advantages of viral marketing are low costs, great reach, high credibility, high efficiency and the possibility of continuous campaign adjustments.

The downfalls of viral marketing include the extent of the reach of failed campaigns, the lack of control, risks that the viral message is perceived as spam and the limited possibility for segmentation. One of the things you definitely want to avoid is people being so repulsed at the message (either the words are sick or the images are disgusting) that they do not pass it on, and in fact consider the topic negatively in the wrong way.

sources: webopedia , witiger.com , spd4290vm