Viral Marketing Now

2004-03-14T16:03:00.000-05:00

"The Passion" wins with viral marketing
Twenty-four million dollars isn't bad for a feature film box office opening. But on a Wednesday? That was followed by $84 million the first weekend and $228 million in the first two weeks of the run, according to Exhibitor Relations.

Obviously, some extraordinary forces were at work in the marketing of "The Passion of the Christ." There was the big build-up and wide-ranging controversy over its gut-wrenching violence and alleged anti-Semitism. Online marketing played a role, too.

However you feel about the film, there's no denying it's been a success from a marketing perspective. Although I can't prove it -- attempts to reach the distributor and its partners came up empty -- I'd bet online marketing had a significant impact on those dramatic box office numbers.
Continued in the article

2003-09-23T08:44:00.000-04:00

Can you raed tihs?

The number of people passing this around leads me to believe this is quite viral:
Aoccdrnig to rseaecrh prefroemd at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a total mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.

The original reference is a letter to New Scientist magazine by Graham
Rawlinson of Aldershot, Hampshire (vol 162 issue 2188 - 29 May 1999,
page 55) titled "Reibadailty".

Rawlinson writes: 'You report that reversing 50-millisecond segments of
recorded sound does not greatly affect listeners' ability to understand
speech (In Brief, 1 May, p 27).

'This reminds me of my PhD at Nottingham University (1976), which showed
that randomising letters in the middle of words had little or no effect
on the ability of skilled readers to understand the text. Indeed one
rapid reader noticed only four or five errors in an A4 page of muddled
text.

'This is easy to denmtrasote. In a puiltacibon of New Scnieitst you
could ramdinose all the letetrs, keipeng the first two and last two the
same, and reibadailty would hadrly be aftcfeed. My ansaylis did not come
to much beucase the thoery at the time was for shape and senqeuce
retigcionon. Saberi's work sugsegts we may have some pofrweul palrlael
prsooscers at work.

'The resaon for this is suerly that idnetiyfing coentnt by paarllel
prseocsing speeds up regnicoiton. We only need the first and last two
letetrs to spot chganes in meniang.

'This was not easy to type!'

The letter is in New Scientist's searchable online archive
(archive.newscientist.com)

2003-08-31T20:57:00.000-04:00

Instant Rapport - Make Your Site Talk

Social psychologists tell us that humans are more likely to trust you if they can hear you and see you because you bring more "communication modalities" into the mix. For this reason alone, it makes sense to consider adding audio to your site.

This technology has viral potential until the novelty and uniqueness ware off. Here are some ideas of what you can do with audio on your site: Talking E-mails, Homepage Voice Messages, Talking Ezines, Voice Updates, Audio Learning & Training, Audio Postcard, Audio Testimonials. Check it out.

2003-08-29T15:13:00.000-04:00

Sobig's Small World

This virus has lots of marketers looking at word of mouth in slightly new ways... More

2003-08-21T18:10:00.000-04:00

Friendster

Friendster's concept is very similar to the SixDegrees idea, but the marketing spin is much more fun and easier to understand. Everyone has a profile and a list of friends. Users are allowed to browse the user base and see the profiles of all their friends and their friends' friends. A testimonials function lets people "recommend" their friends to others. That's it. Not too complicated, but couched in the idea of friends. All of a sudden, it becomes a way not only to see how many friends you actually have but also to meet new people who have been prequalified, because a friend of a friend must be a good person, right?

And that's the trick. Viral communities are all slowly becoming dating services, because those seem to be the only communities online that are thriving and making money. Friendster does away with most of the community-oriented tools SixDegrees had. It focuses instead on profiles. It's like browsing AOL profiles of a qualified subset of people. More

2003-08-13T09:52:00.000-04:00

Radioio is Great

Here's pitch for a cool online-only radio station that has obtained over 250,000 subscribers by word of mouth. That says something about the quality of their station. Yet, less than one percent pay for the service.

They describe themselves better than I could: "Finally, a radioStation that understands that your two ears are connected to a brain. no mindless dj banter, no in-stream advertising or commercial advertising (although you might see a 'gateway ad' while your stream is buffering up), and no repetition! Each and every song that you hear is HAND PICKED by our streamHosts that are *totally* committed to you and to bringing to you *only* the best music in the world."

It's about the music... It's about quality... Subscribe to radioio right now! Tell your friends, too (to subscribe)!

2003-08-10T19:43:00.000-04:00

Procrastination Clock

This program calculates how long you have left to live, based on your birthday, gender, and race. The statistical averages are produced with information from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and from the National Center for Health Statistics.

Not the most viral thing I've ever seen, but still interesting; Your 'unhealthy' friends and family may benefit ;-)

Here's a good ebook on how to stop procrastination from www.timestarvation.com: Great Ways to Eliminate Procrastination

Also, here's a humorous procrastination poster: "Hard work often pays off over time, but laziness always pays off now"

2003-08-09T22:17:00.000-04:00

Six Degrees is Still Generally True

Columbia University published the first results of their "Small World Research Project," where they identified 18 target people in 13 different countries, then asked participants to get a message through to the target by sending e-mails to friends and acquaintances. On average, researchers say, people can reach their targets in five to seven steps. More.

2003-07-26T14:45:00.000-04:00

Talk About Viral!

Even with no marketing dollars, over a third of all U.S. households registered for the FTC's National Do Not Call Registry. More.

2003-06-11T10:27:00.000-04:00

Larry's Face

A couple of months ago, Bruce Goldfarb created LarrysFace.com to practice his Photoshop and HTML skills. He needed a test project, and found a picture of his brother Larry with a peculiar look on his face. Goldfarb made a Web page for the amusement of friends and family -- adding photos now and then -- and pretty much forgot about it.

Usually, Goldfarb's Web site gets a handful of vistitors a day, maybe 1,000 hits a month -- mainly by people who stumble across a link through a search engine. But after Larry's face was the subject of a Photoshop contest at the hugely popular Fark.com, within about eight hours it had generated 36,900 page hits. It was mentioned at some other Web sites, and then exceeded 100,000 page hits per day.

People are leaving questions for Larry, sending in dozens of tricked photos. Goldfarb has heard from people in Montreal, Canada, in Australia -- in short, from all over the place. Goldfarb says he's as baffled as the next person at the response.

"I don't know why it's popular," Goldfarb writes. "Maybe people are weary from war and SARS, ready for a break. I think the fact that it's funny, rated PG and safe for work lends itself to this kind of viral replication. It's a sort of Barbie doll for geeks; you can dress Larry up and make him look silly. How often do you get the opportunity to humiliate a helpless victim?"

2003-06-06T17:23:00.000-04:00

Pansonic Goes Viral

Panasonic launched a tongue-in-cheek Web site this week that pits its products against the enemies of fun. The meant-to-be viral site, at peopleagainstfun.org, purports to be the Web presence of a non-profit advocacy organization, People Against Fun (PAF), representing "like-minded people who refuse to have fun, and wish to control the spread of fun around the United States."

Amidst anti-fun propaganda are admonitions to avoid Panasonic consumer electronics products and a proposal people instead buy a radish because, "This radish is just as portable, and it's [sic] bitter taste will remind you that we're not put on this earth to have fun."

The PAF Web site, while clearly a small part of the effort, aims to drive interest in these key products and help build a database of potential customers via a sweepstakes. Other site tools include videos designed to allow people to easily forward them to friends. One depicts a handsome young man running along the beach, and suggests that People Against Fun could help him learn to live without fun in a "barren joyless existence." Villains of the videos are shown with Panasonic electronic devices.

2003-06-03T09:26:00.000-04:00

Contests Indicate Viral-ness

Contests are one of the best available methods for measuring how "viral" an advertiser's customer base really is. By including a viral component in a contest (usually a refer-a-friend option), advertisers can determine the social makeup of their audience and ascertain whether other viral marketing techniques would prove useful in bolstering their brands. There are other advantages to contests... more

2003-06-02T09:57:00.000-04:00

Get the Axe

Unilever's Axe Deordorant Bodyspray is enjoying great success with it's viral-ish campaign. Sure, they spent nearly $1M on several elements including a set of home video-like commercials, each featuring an attractive young woman instantly transformed into a nymphomaniac by a whiff of Axe. After four months, they were pleased with their ROI, getting over 200K visitors to their site (theaxeefffect.com) via word of mouth -- and a total of over 700K visitors. This helped lead to a 4% deodorant market share.

The campaign was successful largely due to the approach of letting some of it's 18- to 24-year-old customers find the ads by advertising on selected sites and magazines and letting their audience tell their friends about it. Unilever didn't want their audience to feel like they were being sold too. That approach was the right one.

2003-05-28T09:12:00.000-04:00

Urban Legends

Urban Legends are certainly viral. Howstuffworks.com explains this phenonon.

2003-05-23T09:44:00.000-04:00

Purple Cow

At a webcast talk by author Seth Godin, he talked about his new Purple Cow book. Points of his talk:

Interruption advertising is dead. (This is not a new message from Seth). This is because people are bombarded by advertising on TV, radio, sign, email, phone calls, and on and on. More here.

In addition, marketer's response is to do even more advertising to break though the noise, further decreasing its effectiveness.

For this reason, you have to create something remarkable -- That is, it must be worth making a remark about

People think remarkable is too risky. But safe (leading to irrelevance) is actually more risky. This doesn't mean you have to create a new product or service. In fact, you should work with existing products, where you know there is a demand.

Ask yourself, "How can I change my proposition so people will talk about it?"

2003-05-22T12:30:00.000-04:00

Fighting Spam

Mailshell (a spam-fighting solution) has a tell-a-friend incentive that has helped it grow to over 800,000 customers. Praised by a very long list of respected publications, Mailshell offers a way to eliminate 99% of all spam. It allows users to "create an unlimited number of disposable email addresses to permanently and accurately block spam from anyone at any time without affecting the rest of your email. You can even set up different levels of filtering for different purposes."

Their ""Tell a Friend option is similar to other's, but is not a third party tool. It is built into their site, and is effective because Mailshell is a good product that users interact with frequently. Mailshell's $9 reward for each new sign-up also helps!

2003-05-21T08:26:00.000-04:00

Text Messaging

Text messaging (SMS) can be a great way to spread word of mouth (in any step of the process), particularly for teens and pre-teens. Here are tips from Promo Magazine:

DO use it to hype something innovative and easy to understand
DO send short messages; write pithy copy, and use SMS lingo
DO SMS messages of urgency, such as dollars off NOW
DO use SMS marketing to reach 20-somethings and younger

DON'T use SMS to sell the mundane -- keep it exciting
DON'T bombard someone unless they've opted in for regular reminders
DON'T overdo the cure messages, which are tough to decode
DON'T SMS the 50-plus crowd; it'll confuse, annoy, or fall into a black hole

2003-05-20T07:45:00.000-04:00

Viral Coke

Coke is having good success with viral marketing and teens, generating over a million page views a day!! Although there is a invite-a-friend button, traffic is mainly generated by word of mouth and email. CokeMusic.com's Viral Explosion is the result of using fresh content and a virtual meeting place

2003-05-19T00:10:00.000-04:00

Highly Caffinated Comedy is Viral

The theatre comedy Triple Espresso is utilizing local word of mouth by asking show patrons to send a post card provided by the theatre. The post card provides a space on the front for the sender to write a comment that starts out, "This show is..." They also provide clear instructions about what to do with the post card, including handing it in at end of the show -- theatre provides the stamp. On the back is the traditional space to write more along with the line in bold, "Just get tickets & Go!"