Viral Marketing

Currently, the passive advertisements on television, radio or in magazines are not enough to influence the target group. More and more companies use viral marketing as a tool to spread their message.

Viral marketing is spreading video clips, games, ebooks, software, images or text messages, mainly, through the internet. The social media platforms have a major role in the spreading of these virals.

However, a viral is only a viral if the audience finds it so amazing, funny or unusual that they want to share it with the rest of their friends.

And this fact, that the target group spreads the message themselves, is the power of viral marketing.

In traditional marketing, a large group of people get reached with a message, often, many of these people do not belong to the target group. Which means that it takes a while before a message has reached the right people? However, viral marketing approaches the target group you want to reach. Because the 'infected' people send a link to friends, who are likely to be persons within the desired target group.

There are a lot of examples from virals, but I will show you only three of them…

Evolution - Dove 
A very famous viral is the one for the "Campaign for Real Beauty" from Dove. This viral promotes their self-esteem fund by focusing on the natural beauty of women.

This viral has led to many parodies, of which this is one.

Boeing 737 lands on water 

This is a Dutch viral, which has been viewed very often.

Stanislav - Russian mafia on Hyves 

This is a campaign by the Dutch government to inform on web activity and privacy. This viral is running on the Dutch social network Hyves and had 1 million views in the first 24 hours.