In order to turn a message viral, some companies have provided “pass-it-on” tools like online forwarding options and even financial rewards for spreading the message. In a popular strategy, registered individuals are paid cash when others make purchases through advertising banners on the web. Babel Media reportedly launched a new computer game by posting cryptic messages on Internet notice boards and chat rooms where computer gamers hang out. The strategy created an underground buzz that translated into 200,000 visitors to the company’s website in 10 days. Still another strategy has been to get consumers to pass back information not only about themselves but also about their friends and colleagues. One contest, which offered a free trip to the winner and three friends, required contestants to provide details about their friends when entering.

Deloitte’s John Warshawsky, who designed the Bullfighter software and built the website, says “We’re Deloitte Consulting. Our product isn’t sexy and exciting. Generating name awareness for our company is not an easy thing to do. For us, this was just unprecedented.”

Fiona Harvey of the Financial Times has argued that all advertising aspires to become viral because the most effective form of recommendation is word of mouth. However, if something goes viral, she claims, it is because the advertising agency was creative. Wrote Harvey, “Viral marketing works only when the creative is so good it would have gone viral anyway. But at least it doesn't cost much” (Financial Times, July 17, 2001). Deloitte’s Bullfighter product is an example of good creative: the product is interesting and relevant to the business community and the story is unique because a consulting firm is the last place one might expect to find jargon busters.

Because viral marketing is so inexpensive compared with traditional advertising, it is the “value you didn’t pay for.” In a market downturn, the low cost of viral marketing obviously becomes a plus. Some advertising agencies are now finding that their clients are asking for Internet-based viral marketing campaigns in addition to broadcast ads.

But viral marketing is far from an exact science. It is practically impossible, for example, to predict what will go viral and what will sink like a stone. Viral messages have to be “cool,” or they won’t get passed on. Obviously no one wants to look foolish for having sent on something that is inane or that lacks authenticity.

A viral marketing campaign also risks coming across as too heavy, in which case it will inevitably fail. Few consumers want to think they have been set up to pass on advertisements. If Hotmail had appended its promotion as part of the sender’s email message rather than as a separate note at the bottom, the venture might very likely have expired before it got off the ground.

The most frequently heard complaint, however, is that viral marketing provides little if any way to gauge a campaign’s success. Because successful campaigns spread on their own, they leave behind little that can be used to measure their effectiveness. There is no way, for example, to track where emails have gone, how many people have seen a message, or whether the people reached are within the target audience. For this reason, some viral marketers have started asking for permission to contact people later on, even though they may risk slowing down the spread of their virus by doing so.

As writer Gladwell notes, word-of-mouth messages can become distorted. “The act of passing from person to person causes much more mutation in the message as compared to a media message,” he said by interview. Consequently, messages that start off promotional can easily turn inaccurate or even destructive when passed via Internet.

Finally, there’s the problem of creating something that’s actually interesting enough to pass on. According to Mark Curtis, a partner at Fjord communications agency, ads alone won’t do it. “The trouble with viral marketing is that one or two very good stories obscure the truth, which is that for the most people brand communications are not interesting enough to send to friends,” he says.

The reason why viral campaigns like Hotmail and Bullfighter take off after initial introduction through the media or email is because they are of interest or use to the audience. As is so often the case, a lousy product or service still does not sell itself.    

[25-Aug-2003]