Viral Marketing Course version II

INTRODUCTION TO VIRAL MARKETING

Version II
25-26 June 2009
Stephen Lawrence Centre, London

Viral Marketing: 25-26 June 2009
www.kathryncorrick.co.uk

Programme – Day 1

• What is viral marketing?
• Showcase and examples
• Team task
• Preparing the ground
• Seeding
• Tools of the trade

Viral Marketing: 25-26 June 2009 www.kathryncorrick.co.uk

Programme – Day 2

• Bringing your campaign to life
• Case studies
• Project management
• Launch
• Measuring success
• Ethics, legal and codes of conduct
• Team task presentations


Introductions


Pub Quiz


Round 1
1. How many households in the UK had broadband by the end of 2007?
15.4 million
2. What was the online ad spend for the UK in 2007?
£2.8 billion
3. What percentage of the internet population is over 55?
19%
4. What is the percentage of unwanted emails (spam) sent over the net each year?
97%
5. Who between the ages of 25 and 34 spend more time online: women or men?
Women
6. How many SMS (texts) were sent in December 2008 in the UK?
7.7 billion
7. What is the most popular online activity?
Using email – 29.9m
8. What is the average age of a visitor to YouTube?
34
9. Which age group were the largest users of SMS in 2008 Q3 in the UK?
55+
10. What percentage of 15-24 year olds watched user-generated content in 2007?
87%


Round 2
1. Who is the trade association for the internet marketing industry?
The IAB (Internet Advertising Bureau)
2. Name three types of media that can be used in viral marketing
Email, online games, SMS, social media apps, video…
3. Which 1960s singer used viral marketing to promote their greatest hits box set?
Bob Dylan
5. What is an ARG?
Augmented or Alternative Reality Game
4. Name three video sharing sites
YouTube, Facebook, Vimeo, Brightcove, DailyMotion, MySpace, Flickr, Metacafe
6. Which lager brand created a digital pint game for the iPhone?
Carlsberg
7. How many views on YouTube in the UK has the Cadbury’s Gorilla ad had?
Over 5 million
8. Which off-license chain prior to Christmas 2006 used email and social media
to promote a 40% off online printable voucher?
Threshers
9. How many views did Burger King’s Subservient Chicken game rack up in its first
week?
46 million


Viral marketing: a board room debate


Which is your favourite viral marketing campaign?

• Why?
• How did you find out about it?
• What makes a good viral campaign?


So, we’re allocating budget, but what is it?


Viral marketing is…
• A way of thinking
• A strategy
• About spreading a message


Viral marketing…
Is not confined to a particular medium (despite appearances
and strong associations with video and YouTube).

It isn’t viral by definition of the medium used or by the intent of
creation.

Something ‘goes’ viral, if the message spreads successfully.

You cannot make a viral campaign, but you can create a
campaign that uses strategies that may make your campaign
more likely to go viral – a subtle but significant difference.


Showcase examples


Hotmail
Launched as one of the first free email service in
July 1996 and bought by Microsoft in Jan 1998 for
a estimated $400m.

Why?
Within 18 months of launch it had already
gathered around 8.5 million subscribers

How?
Hotmail simply attached an automated signature
at the bottom of each e-mail message that
promoted their free service. Every single e-mail
sent by a Hotmail user contained this message,
thus spreading it like a virus. Recipients would
see the ad, and as a result, they too signed up for
Hotmail.

By 2008 Hotmail had 270 million users and was
available in 35 languages


The Blair Witch Project
Released in US - July 14, 1999
Production Budget - $35,000
Total US Gross - $140,539,099
Prints and Advertising Budget - $6,500,000
Worldwide Gross - $248,300,000

A buzz was created on and off line to promote the film
via the creation of a myth that the creators had found
actual footage of an unexplainable phenomenon left
by a missing group of campers. The creators
themselves seeded this myth by appearing on Pierson
show "Split Screen" with 8 minutes of footage they
claimed was found in the woods. Pierson encouraged
indie aficionados to debate the truth of the Blair Witch
on his web site. When The Blair Witch Project website
went live they further spread the disinformation. The
film was introduced as Sundance during midnight
screening, where industry and Hollywood elite were
treated with same guerrila/fandom strategy, "flyering"
Sundance with "missing" leaflets.
http://tbwp.freeservers.com/webring.html
http://www.blairwitch.com/mythology.htm


Burger King: Subservient Chicken

• Behind the scenes details: http://www.barbariangroup.com/posts/1938-
happy_5th_birthday_subservient_chicken


Simpsons: the movie, avatar creator


Will It Blend?


Mini – ‘Ave a word


Questions?


Play time: what makes these viral?
• http://dylan.sonybmgmusic.co.uk
• http://www.willitblend.com
• http://aveaword.glueserv.com/
• http://www.icetruck.tv/news/
• http://www.knowthesigns.com/
• http://www.horselstest.no/english/
• http://www.mcvideogame.com/game-eng.html
• http://demo.fb.se/e/ikea/comeintothecloset2/site/default.h

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKAInP_tmHk
(note no. of views)


Other examples to look at:
Radio Head: In Rainbows and Ho_use of/ card_s
http://code.google.com/creative/radiohead/viewer.html

Nine Inch Nails, Ghost’s I-IV album (wikipedia a good
starting point)

T-mobile, Life’s for Sharing, 2009 campaign(s)


Discussion: what makes something go viral?


Viral marketing elements (a selection)
A successful viral marketing strategy:

• Give away products or services (including entertainment)
• Provide for effortless transfer to others
• Scale easily from small to very large
• Exploit common motivations and behaviours
• Utilize existing communication networks
• Take advantage of others' resources


Lunch


Team brief


Planning
Identify:
• Brand or product(s) to be marketed
• Target market or audience/people you are trying to speak to
• The media they use to commonly communicate and share stuff
• Budget
• Timings
• Overall aim: brand awareness, increase sales, increase
customer details acquisition?
• Activity that may impact on campaign and timings – brand
redesign, new product launch, PR campaign, your schedule
(eg. holidays)


Planning: before you go too far…

Be honest – how good is the brand or product you
are trying to market?

ie…

How hard are you going to have to work, and if
you’re successful will the brand/product stand up to
the attention?


Planning - benchmarking

• Understand and benchmark your current online presence
– Official
– Customer, PR, media, generated
• Understand your existing customer base and review how you
communicate, benchmark
• Understand who are the best influencers for your brand

Review and revise where required before going any further


Benchmarking your online presence
(In addition to any server-side stats package -
Google Analytics, WebTrends etc)


Exercise 1.
Use the following sites to understand how your site is reflected
in search:

• Google and another search engine (note organic as well as
paid-for search results)
• http://web.grader.com/
• http://www.justsearching.co.uk/tools/site-comparison/

Did you find any unusual links or associations?

If benchmarking: record the results, in particular, the number of
back links and position within search (1st, 2nd, 3rd etc)


Exercise 2.
Use the following site to get a sense of how your
chosen site is reflected in social
media/communications:

http://www.socialmention.com


Some other sites to check
Blog search engines: www.icerocket.com, www.technorati.com or
www.google.com/blogsearch

Microblogs: www.twitter.com, www.tumblr.com

Social networks – www.flickr.com, www.myspace.com, www.facebook.com,
www.bebo.com, www.xing.com

Social bookmarking – www.delicious.com, www.stumbleupon.com

Social news – www.digg.com, www.reddit.com, www.newsvine.com

Video sharing: www.youtube.com, www.vimeo.com, www.dailymotion.com

Also check: www.wikipedia.com, Yahoo Groups, Google Groups, forums

Benchmark: quality and quantity of mentions, clips and posts
Note: This list is not exhaustive. For a more comprehensive list see:
http://www.lotame.com/blog/defend-your-brand-within-30-important-social-media-platforms/


A social media deviation
RSS and social bookmarks
• http://www.commoncraft.com (instruction videos)
• http://www.bloglines.com
• http://del.icio.us

Twitter
Follow #hashtags using http://twitter.com/search
Or think about using a desktop application such as
Tweetdeck or Seesmic


Day 2


Review of Day 1
In pairs discuss:
• One new thing your learned yesterday
• One thing you found challenging or didn’t
understand


Case Studies


Audi: The Art of the Heist
Challenge: In the spring of 2005, Audi of America launched the
A3, a premium compact which was a new category of car in the
North American market. It was loaded with innovations and
retailed at a higher-than-expected price. On top of that, other
luxury car companies who had attempted this before had failed.
Audi faced a significant challenge.

Target. Highly affluent ($150K+), stylish, tech-savvy, web-
addicted young men (ages 25-34) who are extremely active and
mobile


The solution


Media and results
• Media used over the course of 90 Results, in the first 90 days of the
days: campaign:
Television
Newspapers » 45 million PR impressions
Outdoor » 2 million AudiUSA.com visitors
Commuter Rail
Magazines » 500,000 story participants
Websites » 10,000 dealer leads
Blogs » 4,000 test drives
Live Events
Email » 1,025 cars sold
Podcasts
Films
Seeding
Online Advertising
Direct Mail
Radio
Wild Postings
Voicemail


Amnesty International UK


Exercise: Taking the Bob Dylan campaign apart
• http://dylan.sonybmgmusic.co.uk
Note down:
• The user journey
• Sharing opportunities and embedding
• All the opportunities to capture email data
• How the site is branded
• Where the mentions of the album are


Break


Your customers are your best evangelists and
marketers


As are your employees


Therefore: to increase the likelihood of a
campaign going viral it’s best to already be
regularly communicating, listening and
talking with your customers and employees.

Respect
Listen
Learn
Converse
Viral Marketing: 25-26 June 2009
www.kathryncorrick.co.uk

A bit about tagging


Sharing options and embedding


Measuring success
Decide what for you success looks like. Is it:
• Increased sales?
• A high profile?
• More people visiting your website?
• An increase in a action on your website (eg. filling in a form)
• Customer acquisition?
• A better understanding of your customers or market?
• Increase in brand/product/service awareness
• Other(s)

Using all the benchmarking work previously, and other information that you
regularly collect, compare your progress.

Set up a spreadsheet and record your results at a set time each week/month.

Set time aside to analyse your results against your success criteria eg. did an
increase in visits to the website co-inside with an increase in sales?


Ethics, best practice, the law


Ethics
WOMMA fundamental principles:

• Happy, interested people will say good things about you
• Honest, genuine opinion is our medium
• We start, support, and simplify the sharing
• Word of mouth cannot be faked
• Word of mouth marketing empowers the consumer
http://womma.org/ethicscode/code/


WOMMA Code of conduct

5. Consumer protection and respect are paramount
6. The Honesty ROI: Honesty of Relationship, Opinion, and
Identity
7. We respect the rules of the venue
8. We manage relationships with minors responsibly
9. We promote honest downstream communications
10. We protect privacy and permission in a campaign when asked
by consumers or the media.
11. We will provide contact information upon request.
http://womma.org/ethicscode/code/


Legal
Under the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading
Regulations 2008 the following are now outlawed:

• Creating fake blogs
• Falsely representing oneself as a customer; and
• Falsely advertising on social media site


No longer permitted:

• ‘Astroturfing’, the practice of falsely creating the impression of
independent, popular support by means of orchestrated and
disguised public relations activity. For example, in the context
of social media, astroturfing techniques could include the
creation of a dedicated blog, posting comments on others'
blogs or on message boards, submitting supposedly amateur
videos to YouTube

• ‘Flogs’ the creation of a fake blog by a PR agency or
organisation that poses as a customer to promote a product or
service.

http://www.cipr.co.uk/Membership/conduct/social-media.asp


Also see…
The 1998 UK Data Protection Act
http://www.opsi.gov.uk/Acts/Acts1998/ukpga_19980029_en_


LUNCH


Time to work on team brief


Guest speaker:
Gavin Williams, Classic Wine Direct
Classic Wine Direct launched in June 2009. We wanted to move away
from a direct marketing model to a personal and passionate way of
sharing our love of wine … and selling it online.

Influential work on our thinking
Panacea81 http://www.youtube.com/user/panacea81?view=videos
Wine Library - http://tv.winelibrary.com/

Prior to launch
http://wineoftheweek.co.uk/
http://www.twitter.com/wineoftheweek

Classic Wine Direct
http://www.classicwinedirect.com


Other sites Gavin mentioned
• http://www.ning.com - create your own social
network
• http://www.tubemogul.com/ - video distribution and
analytics service


Time for presentation preparation


Presentations and prizes


General resources
• Viral Monitor - http://www.chinwag.com/lists/viralmonitor
• Word of Mouth Marketing Association - http://www.womma.org/
• IAB - http://www.iabuk.net/en/1/viralmarketing.html
• Mashable – http://www.mashable.com
• Common Craft – http://www.commoncraft.com


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