Marketing theory 2014-miles-3-18

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The rhetoric of managed contagion: Metaphor and agency in the discourse of viral
marketing
Chris Miles
Marketing Theory 2014 14: 3 originally published online 3 October 2013
DOI: 10.1177/1470593113506433
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Article
The rhetoric of managed
contagion: Metaphor and
agency in the discourse of
viral marketing
Chris Miles
Queen Mary University of London, UK
Marketing Theory
2014, Vol. 14(1) 3–18
ª The Author(s) 2013
Reprints and permission:
sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav
DOI: 10.1177/1470593113506433
mtq.sagepub.com
Abstract
This article investigates the ramifications of the epidemiological metaphor at the centre of viral
marketing. In particular, it explores the tension that exists between the presentation of the viral
marketing message as an independent, quasi-organic entity with a threatening, wild potential and
the apparently contradictory assertion that it can also be ‘domesticated’ through careful manage-ment
of its design parameters and infection vectors. The influence of both memetics and the tip-ping
point motif on this depiction is discussed, and the article considers the persuasive advantages
of implications of message agency in the marketing of viral marketing itself. This article is the first
study of the root metaphors underlying the discourse of viral marketing and serves to contextua-lise
that discourse within the historical influence of memetic theory and the early literature on
word-of-mouth marketing, and the more general relationship that marketing continues to have
with issues of control.
Keywords
Contagion, control, marketing communication, memetics, metaphor, viral marketing, word-of-mouth
marketing
The discourse of viral marketing is suffused with epidemiological comparisons. Scholars and
practitioners talk of illness and infection, compare marketing messages to the Black Death or Ebola
and discuss ways to unleash viral campaigns so they can spread like a contagion across commu-nities
of consumers. Yet, despite the elaborated use of the viral and contagion metaphors in the
presentation of viral marketing techniques, there has been exceedingly little reflection on what
Corresponding author:
Chris Miles, School of Business and Management, Queen Mary University of London, Francis Bancroft Building, Mile End
Road, London E1 4NS, UK.
Email: c.j.miles@qmul.ac.uk

4 Marketing Theory 14(1)
such epidemiological analogies might say about the understanding of communication and per-suasion
that underlies them.
Consequently, I propose to examine the academic and professional engagement with viral
marketing from the point of view of the rhetorical strategy at the heart of the technique’s existence
in marketing discourse; the contagion metaphor.
I will argue that the adoption of this metaphor into marketing communication generates a
tension between associations of wild, uncontrollable danger on the one hand and carefully con-trolled
domestication on the other. This tension is at the heart of viral marketing’s success in terms
of its professional acceptance yet also puts it into conflict with theories of marketing communi-cation
that are based upon valorising the necessity for long-term relationship construction and the
generation of deep dialogue between brand and stakeholders.
After an initial explanation of the methodology informing the article, I will move directly on to
a discussion of the origins of the contagion metaphor in viral marketing discourse. Following this, I
will broaden the investigation out to consider the significance of both memetics and the tipping
point motif as antecedents to and informants of that discourse. I will then consider the rhetorical
tensions between wildness and control, which manifest themselves in the professional talk about
viral marketing and consider the implications for the understanding of the communication process
that this tension leads to.
In concluding, I will highlight the stark disconnection between the contagion-based rhetorical
strategies of viral marketing and the dialogue-based discourse currently to be found in scholarship
emanating from the service perspective. This disconnection throws into contrast competing views
of communication management and communicative agency within contemporary marketing scho-larship
and contributes to an ironic situation in which viral marketing finds itself promoting a turn-ing
away from interaction with the customer.
A note on methodology
This study looks at discourse. It examines the ways in which those involved in explaining and
selling marketing (academics and practitioners) talk about the type of communication that mar-keting
does (or should do). It is therefore concerned with the persuasive strategies and foundational
metaphorical concepts that hold sway in this discourse and, as such, can be characterised as using a
methodology of rhetorical and semiotic analysis (Laferrie`re, 1979; Tonks, 2002).
So, in this analysis I am concerned with what the sign ‘viral marketing’ represents for those who
theorise about it, use it and promote it. Additionally, I will argue that we have to look at the wider
context in which the discourse of viral marketing occurs in order to fully appreciate the way in
which it draws from and informs the use of other signs and plays a part in the construction of
persuasive positions and dominant discourses. I therefore use rhetorical analysis in order to con-sider
the way in which ‘viral marketing’ is used persuasively in the ‘professional talk’ amongst
academics and practitioners. I am particularly guided in this analysis by the argument that the
metaphors we use to talk about how we communicate have a tremendous impact on how we end up
understanding the process of communication (Lakoff and Johnson, 1980; Reddy, 1979).
In addition to ‘academic’ marketing voices present in journals, monographs and conference
papers I will make heavy reference to the contributions to the viral discourse of more ‘popular’
marketing trendsetters, like Seth Godin, as well as to non-marketers like Malcolm Gladwell and
Richard Dawkins. The discourse of viral marketing is not the sole preserve of marketing academics
– indeed, much of the theory and conceptualisation that exists in the field has originated in the

Miles 5
work of popular marketing ‘gurus’ and non-marketers and has been further extended in the busy,
cross-fertilising communities of the Internet.
The origins of viral marketing practice
Viral or contagion marketing appears to represent the most significant change in communication
orientation inmarketing since the inception of the discipline. For a campaign ormessage to have ‘gone
viral’ is now seen as one of the keys to e-marketing success; as Earl and Waddington put it, ‘creating
content that goes viral is the ultimate goal of any Internet marketing professional’ (2012: 39).
Even though the exact origins of the idea of ‘viral marketing’ remain debated, most com-mentators
agree that it was the Hotmail sign-up campaign, starting in 1996, which ‘put viral mar-keting
on the map’ (Marsden, 2006: xxi) and established the marketing model for the use of online
contagion strategies. The short text tag automatically generated at the end of a Hotmail email mes-sage
that invited the recipient to sign-up for a free Hotmail account contains all the basic elements
of the approach: a marketing message sent to a group of people by a trusted, non-marketing, source
(preferably, a friend). The Hotmail tag line leveraged the trust that recipients felt for the sender in
order to make them more likely to take advantage of the free offer.
Of course, put in these terms, the Hotmail campaign was in no way revolutionary. Indeed,
marketers had been taking advantage of this approach ever since they had became aware of Katz
and Lazarfeld’s (1955) research on the way that social influencers spread reinterpretations of
messages across communities via word of mouth (WOM). Their two-step flow of communication
model took Shannon’s (1948) transmission model of information flow from a sender to a receiver
and pointed out that this transmission is in reality often interrupted by opinion leaders in small
social groupings, who heavily influence, through commentary and contextualisation, the reception
of messages by the wider public. Research on the two-step flow became instrumental in defining a
field of research focused on studying ‘the diffusion of information’ (Bennett and Manheim, 2006;
Boase and Wellman, 2001; Rogers, 1995), which has had important implications for medical and
political policy. In marketing, it was instrumental in defining the field of WOM communication,
leading to Dichter’s (1966) and Arndt’s (1967) separate studies on the links between product-related
conversations between consumers and product adoption, Engel et al.’s (1969) work on the
importance of early adopters (or ‘innovators’) in the WOM channel and Stuteville’s (1968) formu-lation
of the ‘buyer as a salesman’.
So, viral marketing has a clear connection to Katz and Lazarsfeld’s work on the importance of
social influencers, and the way in whichWOMdisseminated through trusted, respected sources has
a powerful effect on consumer beliefs and attitudes. However, while the idea of viral marketing is
often presented as simply online WOM, there is one essential source of differentiation. Viral
marketing takes the two-step flow of communication and injects a complex set of metaphors into
the implied understanding of communication that underlies it.
Centrally, the metaphor of viral contagion represents the message as an organic element with its
own agency, an agency that lends the marketing message a frightening, and yet at the same time
deeply alluring, ability to work on its own. It is this metaphor, then, that is at the heart of the
differentiation between viral marketing and WOM and that therefore serves to extend its meaning
and significance in online marketing communication. In this sense, viral marketing is a rhetorically
elaborated presentation of WOM techniques; its differentiation lies in the way in which it has
cloaked itself in powerful metaphors that resonate with concerns and texts inside and outside of the
marketing discourse.

The origins of the viral marketing metaphor
While the Hotmail campaign represents the first instantiation of viral marketing in practice, it is
Rayport’s roughly contemporaneous (1996/7) article in ‘Fast Company’, which constitutes the first
example of the contagion metaphor being used in an extended discourse to characterise the way in
which online marketing messages can propagate.
Rayport’s thesis is that successful biological and computer viruses have the ‘ultimate marketing
program’ in that they are able to do what ‘every marketer’ aims to achieve, namely, ‘have a
dramatic impact on thinking and behavior in a target market’ (Rayport, 1996/7: 68). Importantly,
Rayport realises that the comparison is one that might be initially distasteful to his readers, con-ceding
the ‘ominous sound’ and ‘harsh’ nature of the epidemiological terminology and the ‘fear or
hate’ that the imagery may normally inspire, but (in a clear instance of procatalepsis) he asserts that
marketers cannot afford to be squeamish because they are in a ‘desperate’ search for workable
solutions in the ‘post-mass-market economy’ (Rayport, 1996/7: 68).
In order to overturn the negative associations that are connected with the topic of contagion,
Rayport uses a series of rhetorical techniques to amplify the attractiveness of the comparison to
marketing practitioners. So, the overarching rhetorical strategy he employs is a very old one:
appeal to the reader’s vanity. This works on two levels: Rayport first threatens the reader’s sense of
professional mastery by pointing out that something as small and simple as a virus is able to
achieve the type of marketing success that they might only dream of. This promotes a sense of
discomfort in the reader, which is then immediately taken advantage of by the author when he
presents his ‘six rules on how to succeed at v-marketing’.
Rayport presents the viral comparison as a distasteful but potent secret that can provide the
desperate modern marketer with a competitive advantage over her fellow professionals. Sup-porting
this gambit are a number of other significant tropes. Rayport speaks of the virus in terms
that clearly ascribe agency to it. Indeed, it is hard to ignore the intense personification that is
present in his descriptions of viral infection. For example, when comparing the ‘turn up the vol-ume’
approach that most marketers use when faced with difficulties in getting through to con-sumers,
he points out that ‘viruses are smarter: they find a way into the host under the guise of
another, unrelated activity’ (Rayport, 1996/7: 68). Here we see, again, the author playing with the
reader’s vanity by suggesting that viruses are smarter than most marketers, but at the same time this
rests upon a personification – viruses are smart, they ‘find a way’.
A little later, Rayport praises the ‘unusually patient’ virus that can lie dormant for years before
‘demanding payback’. The portrait of the virus that Rayport builds up is one firmly anchored in a
sense that the virus is self-aware, motivated by human-like emotions and drives and possesses a
mastery of a series of techniques which should be profitably imitated by humans (whom, it is
implied, have similar motivations).
This is an important point to make because it really lies at the centre of the way in which
marketing discourse has used the contagion metaphor. The viral marketing message is conferred
with agency – the ability to plan for itself, to express its will in strategy and action. Furthermore,
this agency is often couched in quite marked uses of zoomorphism or even straight personification.
These characteristics are repeated in another highly influential source for the early generation of
the discourse of viral marketing; Seth Godin’s (2000) ‘Unleashing the Ideavirus’.
Godin’s book, ‘Unleashing the Ideavirus’, outlines the strategy steps that marketers need to take
in order to design and release an ‘ideavirus’ that will do the work of marketing itself, that ‘moves
and grows and infects everyone it touches’ (2000: 11). Like Rayport’s, Godin’s explanations are

Miles 7
brimming with organic metaphors. For him, the idea transmits itself, replicates itself, mutates and
spreads itself. While the marketer takes pains to design the idea as well as possible (to ‘nurture’ it)
(2000: 17), once it is released (or ‘unleashed’) into a community it is very much working under its
own agency (with its own ‘lifecycle’) (2000: 22). He writes, for example, how ‘some ideas stick
around a long time with each person, influencing them (and those they sneeze on) for months or
years to come’ (2000: 51), and describes how, because most Americans knew nothing about Audi,
when they heard a news story describing its acceleration problems ‘the virus rushed in, filled the
vacuum and refused to be dislodged’ (2000: 52).
Godin describes ideas as living creatures, which are created, grow, replicate and die (if they are
not properly fed). Marketers are portrayed as a strange hybrid between laboratory scientists
designing virulent strains and animal handlers caring for their charges.
Godin’s work in popularising viral marketing has strong connections with that of Malcolm
Gladwell who, first with an article in ‘The New Yorker’ (1996) and then with the book ‘The Tipping
Point’ (2000), introduced the contagion of ideas trope to a much larger, non-marketing audience. It
is also worth noting that Godin, Gladwell and Rayport were all regular contributors to ‘Fast Com-pany’
magazine and, as such, helped to build the rhetorical environment around early viral mar-keting
discourse.
Gladwell’s book argues that social trends are most productively thought of in terms of epi-demics;
that ‘ideas and products and messages and behaviours spread just like viruses do’
(Gladwell, 2000: 7) and, unlike Godin, he brings a diverse amount of apparently ‘scientific’
research to bear in constructing his argument. Indeed, Gladwell is generally careful to avoid
portraying ideas as having separate, organic identities from those that carry them in their minds –
paying more attention to the environmental factors that lead people to find an idea more appealing
at one time rather than another.
Gladwell’s use of the tipping point motif is useful to consider in terms of its relationship to non-marketing
uptake of the contagion metaphor. Marketing discourse is obviously systematically con-nected
with other, wider discourses ongoing in the international news media as well as popular cul-ture
at large. For example, the adoption of the tipping point as an explanatory motif for expressing
the imminent dangers of climate change is noticeable in the public pronouncements of a number of
the major actors in the debate and can be traced back to Gladwell’s own particular formulation of
the spread of epidemics (Russill, 2008; Russill and Nyssa, 2009). The attractiveness of the tipping
point motif in discussions of social policy is a result of the way that Gladwell ‘works hard to sug-gest
the tipping point perspective is developed from the study of epidemics, so that his principles
are simply restatements of the analytic procedures used by epidemiological detectives’ (Russill and
Levin, 2012: 157).
Scientific vocabulary and the certainty of medical research are strong persuaders – they make
the epidemiological analogy appear natural, modern, and rational. In addition, the adoption of
Gladwell’s rhetoric into non-marketing discourses helps to ‘normalise’ the contagion metaphor
making it appear even more reasonable and natural within marketing discourse.
In addition, Gladwell’s central message in ‘The Tipping Point’ is a positive one for marketers.
While messages can spread like a contagion, that spread can be influenced by the careful iden-tification
of key ‘mavens’ who have the most influence over the diffusion of the infection. Mar-keters
simply need to spend their efforts upon persuading these persuaders and they can harness the
power of epidemics. As Fisher and Smith (2011) point out ‘by explaining away the complexity and
unpredictability of social network dynamics, this returns a strong sense of control to marketers’
(Fisher and Smith, 2011: 339). Gladwell’s explication of social contagion is one that leavens the

unease produced through the metaphor of infection by returning agency to the human realm.
Instead of being helpless at the mercy of a spreading virus, Gladwell shows those seeking to
influence human attitudes and behaviour that they are able to assert control over the epidemic
through the control of a few key agents. Ironically, then, Gladwell’s take on viral communication
can be seen as emphasising human agency (in the pivotal form of influencers or mavens) while at
the same time undermining the universality of that agency by suggesting that if one controls the
influencers, one controls the epidemic. I will return to the central issue of control in the rhetoric of
viral marketing in later sections.
Gladwell’s work, while influential in generating much of the recent political and scientific
framing of social contagion and in therefore providing naturalising context to the use of epide-miological
metaphors in discussion of marketing techniques, has not provided viral marketing with
its most unique characteristics. For these, we need to look at the use that Godin makes of quite a
different scientific foil to buttress his formulations of viral agency, namely, the work of biologist
Richard Dawkins.
The memetic perspective
I would argue that the main reason for Godin’s amplification of the marketing virus’ agency is the
influence of biology theorist, Richard Dawkins. Dawkins invented/discovered the ‘meme’, the
basic unit of cultural replication. In ‘The Selfish Gene’ ([1976]2006), first published in 1976,
Dawkins presented the theory that just as genes can be understood as replicators using human
beings as ‘survival machines’ to ensure their protection and safe reproduction, so also there was
another kind of replicator, the meme, that used humans to effect their transmission and survival.
Memes are ideas, catchy tunes, recipes, design motifs and patterns that ‘propagate themselves in
the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain via a process which, in the broad sense, can be called
imitation’ (Dawkins, ([1976]2006): 192). Godin directly references Dawkins in the body of his
text, commenting that he ‘had his own word for the phenomenon I’m calling ideaviruses: memes’
(Godin, 2000: 94). Godin’s development of the ideavirus concept is an attempt to combine
Dawkins’ meme theory, Rayport’s earlier rhetorical use of the virus metaphor as a persuasive
strategy, and Gladwell’s riffing on social epidemics into a developed, proactive marketing strat-egy.
And it is Dawkins’ presentation of the mind-leaping meme that has influenced the popular
acceptance of viral marketing practice more than any soberly written research article.
Dawkins has a strong tendency towards the use of personification in his scientific writing
(Kennedy, 1992). His ‘selfish gene’ theory has, according to Sullivan (1995), ‘achieved an
hegemony quite out of proportion to its intellectual finesse’ largely due to its attractive ‘anthro-pomorphization
of the mechanism of natural selection’ (Sullivan, 1995: 215). Dawkins’ concep-tion
of the meme is equally anthropomorphic and leads to a characterisation of the spread of ideas
which gives them an agency that is in many ways superior to our own; our minds are, after all, the
‘meme’s way of making another meme’ (Herzog, 2002: 364), they have evolved to be efficient
carriers of ideas.
It is worth quickly noting that the terms ‘personification’ and ‘anthropomorphization’ when
applied to memes and marketing viruses betray a curious double valency in the contagion meta-phor.
On the one hand, for example, describing a meme (or gene) as ‘selfish’ is a classic instance of
ascribing human motivations, emotions or thought processes to a non-human entity for rhetorical
effect (viruses, of course, are not really ‘selfish’, ‘smart’, ‘mean’ or ‘aggressive’). On the other
hand, ascribing virus-like characteristics to something non-organic like an idea is an example of

Miles 9
zoomorphism. Actually, the contagion metaphor, and Dawkins’ presentation of memetics, works
by first ascribing human-like qualities to a microorganism and then using the resulting understand-ing
of a virus to describe the non-organic nature of an idea. This is the type of rhetorical complexity
that has made many uncomfortable with Dawkins’ writing. It is also central to the rhetorical con-structions
of viral marketing.
There has been a significant amount of criticism of Dawkin’s meme concept. Bradie, for
example, likens it to the many instances in the history of science of ‘ill-conceived attempts to trans-fer
the cachet of well-established sciences in one domain to other domains’ (2003: 27) and con-cludes
that the idea of the meme is one that ‘affords no real possibility for scientific insight’
(2003: 30). Burman has also written convincingly of the way in which Dawkins’ original formula-tion
of the meme became heavily mutated as it passed through wider scholarly and popular culture,
turning quickly into a distinctly ‘unscientific object’ (2012: 75). However, the ‘correctness’ of
memetics is not the issue here – my argument is that it has been an influential idea that directly
effects the way that Godin and Rayport characterise the marketing virus. And the way that Godin
and Rayport chose to talk about viral marketing has, in turn, been influential on the development of
the viral marketing discourse. A perfect example of this enshrined in a citation framework is to be
found in Golan and Zaidner (2008) when they gloss their use of the phrase ‘viral component’ by
explaining to the reader that ‘this viral component is referred to in both professional and academic
research of viral marketing as the Meme (Dawkins, 1976; Godin, 2001)’ (Golan and Zaidner, 2008:
962). Similarly, the influence of Dawkins’ memetics in wider popular culture feeds into and sup-ports
such formulations in the marketing discourse (as a quick Google search on the term ‘meme’
will show).
The rhetoric of management
Dawkins’ initial theory and the large amount of work that has subsequently gone into trying to
develop memetics into a viable ‘scientific’ field are all quite clear about the basic assumption that
memes evolve over time, sometimes very quickly (Blackmore, 2003; Laland and Odling-Smee,
2003; Marsden, 1998). Indeed, if one pays even cursory attention to the evolutions that occur to
Internet memes over the course of just 6 months, it becomes very clear that messages, once
‘released‘ onto the Web, quickly become repurposed, mixed up, transformed and mutated (Bur-gess,
2008). This is the ‘wild’ side of the meme, its independent, out-of-control and unpredictable
nature that can so fascinate us yet also so clearly demonstrates to us its danger for marketing pur-poses.
If a marketer is to recognise this side of the meme, then promising clients that they can build
a campaign that will ‘go viral’ is deeply problematic. As Rob Brown points out – ‘whilst we cannot
promise to deliver memes as part of a PR campaign we should be able to recognize them and facil-itate
their development’ (2009: 121).
Viral marketing scholars and practitioners are necessarily concerned with message control – if a
marketing message mutates across the course of its infection then the value proposition that it
contains is necessarily going to change. So, while the foundational metaphor of viral marketing is a
powerful and attractive one, it also has frightening implications for marketers. As a consequence,
when marketing scholars contribute to the viral marketing discourse in the pages of academic
journals, we can notice a clear tension between the urge to maintain and develop the contagion
metaphor for its rhetorical power and the need to display a more sober perspective that emphasises
the opportunities to control and manage communication amongst consumers.

For example, Dobele et al. (2005), while largely keeping to a sober vocabulary of deliberate
message transmission, actually entitle their ‘Business Horizons’ article, ‘Controlled Infection!
Spreading the brand message through viral marketing’, thus amplifying the viral metaphor that
their main text seeks to downplay. Kalyanam et al. (2007) compare the viral marketing of Plaxo to
the Ebola virus, commenting that at one point it was ‘growing so aggressively that it was in danger
of killing its hosts’, spinning an exciting narrative of a carefully grown virus spiralling out of the
control of its creators. Pitta (2008) also talks of ‘hosts’ for the viral message, and Kaplan and
Haenlein (2011) talk of ‘epidemics’ and ‘infections’, and make comparisons with the spread of the
Black death. In other words, the allure of the viral metaphor is strong even amongst those who have
a clear interest in portraying the viral marketing process as one which is highly controllable (i.e.
where the marketer is able to design and control a ‘viral’ message).
At the same time, there is also clear evidence amongst the scholarly voices of the viral mar-keting
discourse of a contrary desire to downplay the wild and dangerous ramifications of the
contagion analogy. Such voices are intent on persuading the reader of the manageable nature of
viral communication – retaining the use of the core metaphor as a point of differentiation but
rhetorically downplaying its implications in order to promote a sense of control.
Golan and Zaidner define viral marketing as referring to ‘a broad array of online WOM stra-tegies
designed to encourage both online and peer-to-peer communication about a brand, product
or service’ (2008: 961). They also reference Helm’s earlier attempt to define the area as ‘a com-munication
and distribution concept that relies on customers to transmit digital products via elec-tronic
mail to other potential customers in their social sphere and to animate these contacts to also
transmit the products’ (2000: 159). Cruz and Fill provide a far terser but broader description as an
antidote to the rather complex and inconsistent definitions cluttering the scene – viral marketing
communication is ‘the informal, peer-to-peer electronic exchange of information about an identifi-able
product or service’ (2008: 746).
All these definitions are interesting because they quite clearly attempt to de-emphasize the trace
of the viral metaphor. Helm speaks of customers ‘transmitting’ and ‘animating’ and Cruz and Fill
describe the peer-to-peer message exchange as ‘informal’ (thus implying that customers are using
informal modes to transmit the message to each other). In both of these cases, customers (or pros-pects)
are firmly portrayed as deliberately transmitting the viral message. Golan and Zaidner are
slightly more obtuse, stating that it is the marketing strategies that ‘encourage’ people to (again,
deliberately) transmit the message to each other, thereby downplaying the receiver’s agency.
Goldsmith’s definition, in his 2002 book on the subject, epitomises the way in which many
authors tend to emphasise customer agency when defining the practice: ‘viral marketing [ . . . ]
involves someone choosing to send a message to a friend or a colleague and therefore being in
control’ (2002: 12). He contrasts this with the malicious way in which a computer virus ends up
being passed along ‘without consent’. In viral marketing, he explains, the appropriateness of the
viral metaphor is to be found in the way that the marketing message is ‘contagious as it spreads’
(Goldsmith, 2002: 12) in terms of its speed and multiple vectors of transfer.
To be able to offer control over the viral technique, marketing thinkers need to work against the
very terms of the overarching ‘metaphorical concept’ (to use Lakoff and Johnson’s phrase) that
they are using to describe it. The viral or contagion metaphor resonates with the consequences of
humans being out of control of the spread of an infection – the virus uses us, after all. Attempting to
take advantage of the frisson of the metaphor and at the same time deny its terms puts viral
marketing in a paradoxical position. So, when a scholar does comment on the uncontrollable nature
of viral communication, it is often in a way designed to convey the potential in harnessing such

Miles 11
energy – Fattah, for example, talks of messages spreading like ‘a bushfire on a gusty day’ (2000: 1)
primarily in order to amplify the ‘effortless’ nature of such communication.
By far the most common argumentative trope to be found surrounding the uncontrollable nature
of the viral message is that of talking up the dangers in order to present a solution. So, Pitta talks of
the dangers of traditional WOM being ‘out of the marketer’s control’ (2008: 281) in order to
position the gydget.com website that is the subject of his case study as a ‘webpage with content that
can be controlled and engineered to convey information, create excitement, and provide inter-activity’
(2008: 282). Woerndl et al. identify ‘lack of control’ as the ‘biggest risk’ of viral com-munication,
and yet, in their single case study of a commercial viral campaign (for FatWallet), they
note the fact that ‘the company was in total control of the message content’ and had ‘some degree
of control over transmission’ (2008: 41). Cruz and Fill (2008) also note the central importance of
‘lack of control’ when discussing the disadvantages of viral marketing, but, again, this helps them
sell the need to ‘establish suitable criteria’ for the evaluation of viral campaigns which is the thrust
of their article.
Controlling the ‘other’
Marketing scholars, and gurus (like Godin), realise that there is persuasive capital to be had from
portraying the viral message as initially uncontrollable while holding out the promise of instruc-tional
frameworks for manageable, controllable applications. The meme, the ideavirus, is therefore
something to be initially rhetorically infused with agency in order to amplify its powerful inde-pendence,
but then safely domesticated, or enslaved, by the reassuring management technique of
categorisation and itemisation.
In the end, then, marketing asserts its control over the ‘Other’ of WOM. The marketing response
to the potential wildness of the infectious viral message is to reduce the professional interface with
it to a matter of signal preparation and encoding/decoding techniques – techniques for designing
the most ‘sticky’ meme and the ‘smoothest’ distribution. In this way, the metaphors at the heart of
viral communication and memetic marketing can be seen as clever persuasive feints in a com-mercial
(and academic) environment where the worth of marketing is often questioned. They allow
marketers to take advantage of the wild energy of a personified ‘selfish meme’ while at the same
time claiming the ability to domesticate it back under/into human control for commercial purposes.
Control, as has been pointed out by a number of researchers, has been a vital motivator in the
theory and practice of marketing communication (Stidsen and Schutte, 1972; Tonks, 2002; Varey,
2000, 2002). As Stidsen and Schutte put it more than 40 years ago, ‘marketing’s preoccupation
with the scientization of the producer–consumer relation has produced interpretations of marketing
as a control process rather than as a communication process’, where marketing is therefore
‘something producers do to consumers’ in order to achieve ‘specific outcomes’ (1972: 23). Varey
makes it clear that despite a few such protestations marketing communication has continued to be
seen ‘as a conduit for the transmission or transportation of expressions of self-interest’, ‘in pursuit
of control’ (2002: 94).
This obsession with control has long been of note to commentators and researchers on the world
of marketing communication. Packard’s ([1957] 2007) study of marketing management’s enthusi-astic
adoption of the services of the ‘depth boys’ in ‘The Hidden Persuaders’ as well as Key’s (1974)
rather more questionable crusade against the alleged use of subliminal imagery are two popular and
influential depictions of how the urge for control over consumers lies at the core of marketing
strategy. Ewen’s (1996, 2001) work on advertising and public relations, while written outside the

marketing academy, has brought a formidable level of scholarship to demonstrating the way in which
the marketing communication industries have been dominated by a control orientation.
Marketing scholars from the consumer culture theory (CCT) and postmodern camps have also
repeatedly engaged with the issue of control and how it motivates the marketing process (and the
consumer). For example, McCracken’s (1986) description of how advertising executives and
creatives use marketing communication messages as tools to transfer meaning into goods is a
perfect example of the way in which CCT research often portrays the consumer as the unwitting
dupe of corporate techniques to control their construction of meaning. While the viewer/reader
must necessarily be the final author of the interpretation of any piece of advertising, the long and
involved description that McCracken gives of the careful, professional encoding of meaning
underlines the effort put into controlling the ‘successful decoding’ that the message will undergo.
At a broader level, CCT research has tended to portray not just formal marketing communication
messages, but popular culture texts in general, as ‘lifestyle and identity instructions that convey
unadulterated marketplace ideologies (i.e. look like this, act like this, want these things, aspire to this
kind of lifestyle)’ (Arnould and Thomson, 2005: 875). Here, marketing’s search for control over
consumers’ meaning-making suffuses the whole matrix of popular culture productions.
Scholars dedicated to investigating the significance of postmodern consumption have also placed
issues of control at the heart of the shift from modern to postmodern business and consumer. As Firat
notes, modern marketing concerned itself with attempts to control the consumer; the originators of
marketing communication messages felt they ‘had the power to determine the meaning of the
message’ (2006: 145). Postmodern perspectives have strongly questioned the veracity and efficacy of
such beliefs, pointing out that consumers are as much producers and sharers of meaning in the
consumption process as they are simple receivers or decoders (Firat, 2006; Simmons, 2008).
However, despite the quite varied series of academic voices pointing out that the urge to control
the behaviour of consumers is something that marketing practice should look critically and
carefully at, there has been very little indication that such suggestions have been heeded.
Indeed, in a marketing era when consumers are connected to each other in ways that make such
efforts at control and management more Quixotic than they ever were, it is still difficult for many
of the actors in the marketing communication system to realise that ‘the more in control we are, the
less we are in touch’ (Laffey, quoted in Ramaswamy, 2009: 36). Additionally, marketing reactions
to increasing consumer empowerment have often tended to be characterised by attempts to try and
wrest control back from consumers (Bloom, 1982). So, for example, marketing management’s
reaction to the consumer rights movement in the 1970s and 80s was often one of trying to re-exert
control over consumer organizations via attempting to deny them access to effective public repre-sentation
(Mayer, 2012; Schwartz, 1979).
Nowhere, perhaps, is this tendency more directly stated than by Pires et al. who talk of the ‘need
to regain control over the marketing process’ (2006: 936) that has been lost to technologically
empowered consumers. They argue that ‘the opportunities afforded to business by the Internet
come with a sting of unintended and largely uncontrolled consumer power: uncontrolled because
an individual business is unable to restrict the search process and possible choices available to
consumers through their use of ICT’ (2006: 937).
We might feel that such sentiments are generated by a particularly oversensitive fear of the post-modern,
connected consumer and do not adequately represent the ways in which some enterprises do
seem to have successfully adapted to far more informed and demanding consumers. Yet, the fact
remains that the rhetoric of control is deeply embedded in marketing management discourse –
unsurprisingly, given the shared assumptions implicit within the words ‘management’ and ‘control’.

Miles 13
Discussion
Marketing’s use of offline WOM has always been predicated by the urge to control what con-sumers
said to each other about a brand. Indeed, much of the foundational research on WOM, such
as that of Katz and Lazersfeld referred to earlier, was motivated by the need to investigate why
mass media communication campaigns were not able to predictably control consumer (and voter)
opinion (Bennett and Manheim, 2006). The discovery of the two-step flow of communication was
part of an effort to regain control of consumers by way of identifying and co-opting the contribu-tion
of social influencers.
In this sense, the tension within the discourse of viral marketing can be seen as a rhetorical
playing out of the tension between marketing’s fear of empowered consumers, its need to assert/
reassert control and management over their informal communication processes, and the simulta-neous
narrative that such control is fundamentally counterproductive (the ‘still small voice’ of
dialogue- and relationship-orientated marketing theory). The Internet has vastly amplified the sig-nificance
of the two-step flow of communication, presenting marketers with an environment in
which they are increasingly unable to manage information flow and opinion.
The contagion metaphor at the heart of viral marketing acts as a violent retribution for the
talkativeness and connectedness that has made consumers more uncontrolled and more powerful
than they have previously been able to be.
The viral marketing message infects consumers, half unwittingly, and takes advantage of their
powerful networks of strong and weak ties to race across populations at sometimes awe-inspiring
speeds. Marketing takes control of the consumer once again, by taking advantage of weakness (just
like a real virus) – the weakness for talking to each other, for sharing, which is ironically the very
‘weakness’ that has empowered them on the Web in the first place.
The ritualistic nods to the potential wildness of the viral message that I have noted in my
discussion of the viral marketing discourse above become a rhetorical strategy that reminds the
reader of the wildness of the empowered consumer and therefore of the ‘poetic justice’ of the
solution. Just as the viral message is tamed and managed by the marketer, so also that message will
tame and manage the interpersonal communication of the population it is released into.
The metaphorical granting of agency to the viral marketing message is performed ritualistically
so that it can be taken away. The contagion metaphor, and the complex zoomorphism/anthro-pomorphism
that it is usually loaded with, serves to depict an understanding of communication in
which a marketing virus is imbued with agency so that it can be managed and directed towards a
human population whose agency must in turn be managed. It is the ultimate expression of mar-keting’s
urge to control consumers and their communication.
What is most surprising is that viral marketing’s discourse of surrogate control comes at a time
when more voices than ever in marketing theory and practice have been calling for an abandonment
of the established management and control focus. Scholars of relationships marketing and the service
perspective, for example, have tended to argue that firms need to cede control to customers (Schau
et al., 2009). So, Vargo and Lusch characterise the old, goods-dominant logic as one in which ‘wealth
consists of owning, controlling, and producing operand resources’, whereas the new, evolving
service-centred logic sees wealth as something obtained by ‘application and exchange of specialized
knowledge and skills’ (2004: 7). Instead of control, the new perspectives emphasise support and co-creation,
based around ‘initiating and maintaining a continuing dialogue’ with stakeholders (2004:
14). Gro¨nroos’ redefinition of marketing, for example, focuses on the firm’s role as a promise-maker
helping to enable and support ‘the fulfilment of individual expectations created by such

promises’ (2006: 407). Similarly, Ballantyne et al. describe the way in which a service orientation to
value propositions results in ‘a mutually creative co-constructed dialogue’ (2011: 208). Such per-spectives
have also been supported by research in CCT and postmodern consumerism which has
emphasised the ways in which consumers use brands and marketing communication in the construc-tion
of their multiple identities and are thus already in a co-production relationship with firms
whether the firms ackowledge it or not (Ertimur and Venkatesh, 2010).
The significant move in marketing discourse towards narratives and rhetorics of inclusion,
support, co-creation, sharing and the surrender of control are quite at odds with the metaphor of
contagion that sits at the centre of viral marketing. As Andy Sernovitz, then president of the Word
of Mouth Marketing Association, points out, ‘none of these sophisticated, crazy viral strategies
drive conversation’ (quoted in Ferguson, 2008: 181).
While viral marketing gets consumers talking about your product, it doesn’t get them building a
conversation with you. The dialogue that the contemporary relationship and service perspectives
are premised upon is a dialogue in which the firm participates as an equal partner, yet viral
marketing is focused on getting people to talk to each other, not the firm – in effect locking the firm
out of the conversational network.
Viral marketing, along with the marketing adoption of any of the anthropomorphising com-munication
metaphors around memetics, actually represents a turning away from interaction with
the customer – it becomes the virus that does the interacting, the meme that develops the rela-tionship.
Whether its viral ‘nature’ is embraced or sidelined by viral marketers, the metaphorical
concept of contagion remains at the core of the approach. And, this means that practitioners have to
place an emphasis on getting other people to pass on the virus. While this can create buzz about the
viral presentation (video, email, microsite or image) this is not the same thing as creating a dia-logue
with the brand.
Conclusion
The contagion metaphor, and the rhetorical strategies that it helps to generate in the discourse of
marketing, is a manifestation of the urge for control that has beset marketing management almost
since its inception. As control has become even more difficult to reliably assert over consumers
empowered with cheap and ubiquitous networking technology so the metaphors that marketing has
used in its construction of counter-methodologies have become more violent and more involved,
helping to bolster its own need for a presentation of ‘managed’ communication as well as aiding in
persuasive professional talk directed at clients and decision-makers.
While there is increasing adoption in marketing theory of rhetorics of equality, balanced
conversation and mutually beneficial co-creation much of this remains ‘highly idealized in that it
assumes near perfect and seamless interactivity between participants’ (Fisher and Smith, 2011:
326). Current marketing practice can offer us precious few examples of marketing relationships
which approach anywhere near these idealized levels of equality in the sharing of control. Indeed,
the rhetoric of viral marketing perhaps allows us to trace an alternative trajectory to that sketched
by the advocates of service-dominant logic (S-D Logic), dialogical marketing communication and
the radically empowered postmodern consumer.
I have used the word ‘domestication’ to describe the way in which the wild and dangerous aspects
of the viral marketing construct are initially paraded and then subsumed under the comforting
rhetoric of controlled and managed communication (which often takes the form of descriptions of
how the agency of influencers can be subordinated to the agency of marketers). However, the word

Miles 15
has also been used by Arndt in a way that I think can shed valuable light on what the rhetoric of viral
marketing might really mean in the current marketing landscape. Arndt describes a ‘domesticated
market’ as one where ‘transactions aremoved inside a company (when for instance buyers and sellers
actually merge) or inside the boundaries of a group of companies committed to long term cooper-ation’
(1979: 70). He argues that the generation of domesticated markets is an example of the way in
which companies operate in a manner very different to that described in the ‘impersonal, decen-tralised
exchange’ of classical economists (Arndt, 1979: 70). The domesticatedmarket is the result of
long-term relationships between suppliers, producers and distributors who reap advantages from
established, stable cooperation. Transactions within a domesticated market become governed by
administrative control processes based upon ‘negotiated rules of exchange’. An important feature
of Arndt’s portrayal of such markets is that within them ‘information is consciously and directly
managed’ (Arndt, 1979: 70). Indeed, one of the main advantages of a domesticated market is that
it ‘reduces the uncertainties caused by inadequate information’ and as such significantly increases
the ability to control supply and demand ( Arndt, 1979: 71).
Viral marketing, and indeed the whole panoply of social network marketing, can be interpreted
as attempts to create (or significantly expand) domesticated markets. So, in order to deal with the
chaotic wildness of empowered and constantly interacting consumers, companies attempt to bring
key influencers from those consumers into their own networks. Viral marketing promises to hand
control of larger consumer networks to firms through the expediency of enfolding mavens within a
domesticated market – by providing them with such internal paraphernalia as ‘exclusive’ content,
early review models and access to management such influencers stand to become long-term part-ners.
At a broader level in digital marketing one can point to the way in which large numbers of
companies have effectively become partnered with Facebook, Twitter, Apple and Google in an
effort to reduce their ‘uncertainties caused by inadequate information’. Arndt’s ‘domesticated mar-ket’
allows us to interpret such marketing communication practices as viral communication, blog
marketing, and social media marketing as efforts to include key consumers and communication
hubs within the firm’s relationship network in order to exert control (and, thus, stability) over chao-tic
elements in its environment.
Interestingly, it might be further argued that marketing theories and prototheories such as S-D
Logic, relationship marketing, and the general dialogical turn in some approaches to marketing
communication are also in fact reflections of the ‘domesticating’ tendency in current business
practice. As Arndt argues, long-term relationships are good for a business network because they
generate the opportunity for control. In such situations relationships become stable administrative
ties which, while most definitely requiring sophisticated two-way communication channels, are not
exactly the type of dialogue based, egalitarian dyads that many scholars of the dialogue-turn in
marketing communications envisage. Instead, for a domesticated market, two-way communication
is a means to an end – a negotiation that leads to a stable agreement that can then be administered
with minimal cost. Yes, such practice leads to long-term relationships that are founded on interac-tion
but the end result is the silence of the well-oiled machine, not the constant buzz of the souk.
Consequently, marketing scholarship might be in danger of missing the point of conversational
marketing altogether. Conversations are potential points of control for domesticated markets – they
are opportunities to come to agreement and hence to assimilate a potential partner into the network.
Key metaphors in contemporary marketing, such as those of contagion, conversation, and the
network, have powerful ambiguities with respect to issues of control. While simple comparisons of
rigid organisational hierarchy charts and seemingly chaotic network webs might give the
impression that relationship networks are necessarily egalitarian, dynamic and decentralised this is

not the case. Examination of the rhetoric supporting and promulgating viral marketing shows us
that the prospect of control over networks of conversation is a fundamental part of the allure of the
technique. This allure is not disappearing as marketing theory talks about changing paradigms of
service relationships and mutually respectful dialogue. I would suggest that a more nuanced
understanding of the central place that control has in conversations, relationships and networks is
needed if marketing scholarship is to step up to the challenge of exploring the constructions of
meaning (and the co-creations of value) in the contemporary interactive marketing landscape.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank the three anonymous reviewers for their insightful and constructive
comments throughout the review process.
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Chris Miles is a lecturer in marketing and communications at the School of Business and Management,
Queen Mary University of London, UK. His research interests include rhetoric-based theories of marketing
communication, issues of interaction design and persuasion in online marketing, the application of cyber-netics
to marketing, and the place of control in the theory and practice of marketing management. His work
has been published in Marketing Theory, the Journal of Marketing Management, the European Journal of
Marketing, Cybernetics & Human Knowing and Rhetoric Society Quarterly. His book, Interactive Marketing:
Revolution or Rhetoric?, was published by Routledge in 2010. Address: School of Business and Management,
Queen Mary University of London, Francis Bancroft Building, Mile End Road, London E1 4NS, UK. [email:
c.j.miles@qmul.ac.uk]

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