Mahalakshmi: March 2009 Archives

As friend of mine recently pointed out that the oldest viral marketing meme was a "yawn". A yawn is an expression, transmitting itself, that is contagious in spreading and does so with great rapidity.

Marketers true to their profession immediately caught on to this "virus" ... and thus emerged "viral marketing". In the marketing world we therefore speak of ideas "going viral", infecting a host, or many hosts and then being transmitted to others. Viral marketing is a strategy by which a marketer creates a campaign focused around the goal of causing viewers of that promotion to spontaneously spread it by sending it to friends. Some examples of viral marketing include: chain letters, viral video campaigns (the popularity of YouTube is incredible), and on line opinion polls.

All the above examples of viral marketing are quite simple and relatively easy to understand. People not only participate in the above but also talk about it to others urging them, and influencing them to participate which is the success of viral marketing.
While the original marketer has sent forth the virus of the idea or the theme, the spreading really begins when unrelated people across the globe, start talking about it and using this theme for coffee conversations.

Image courtesy of: Tambako the Jaguar

Why is it that a sure shot way of spreading information by word of mouth is telling a bunch of people something and asking them not to pass it on? Why is it that bad news always travels faster than good news? It is amazing the way in which information on an office affair or someone getting a divorce is more spoken about than, let's say, a promotion or an engagement. We get a vicarious sense of pleasure in knowing something and immediately telling it to others. Makes you wonder why?

The secret of this is there is an inherent quality of "wanting to talk about" certain things like rumors and gossip. This idea is known as the meme (pronounced /mi?m/ - like theme). This is the basis of viral marketing.

Richard Dawkins defined meme as a "unit of cultural inheritance". These are ideas that spread from person to person, ideas like jokes, fashion trends, urban legends, folk sayings and of course gossip.

As we are all becoming more addicted to the web and spending more time on e-mails, research, chat rooms, downloads, uploads, and tweeters, we have discovered that the web can be our soul partner to express what we want and when we want it. The best part is that so many people are "listening" and respond immediately! The fact remains that people we have told the information to, are sharing it with their own network of friends and peers. The feel good factor on receiving a response is the second trigger, which sets us off on searching and creating new information which we wish to share with the world.

More on viral marketing in the coming days ... but in the meantime please feel free to forward this on to anyone who may find it interesting!

Image courtesy of: Raquel Camargo