Viral marketing is a method of marketing whereby consumers are encouraged to share information about a company’s goods or services via the Internet. It relies on a natural cultural transmission between consumers of media content. It has been likened to the spread of a virus whereby the event surrounding the media is akin to the protein shell of a real virus and the resulting ideology, message or meme acts as the genetic information of the virus. Viral marketing is designed to spread.
Indeed this has lead Jenkins to define Spreadable media and Sticky media. Sticky media represents the old form of marketing which emphasises centralised control over distribution and where the company attempts to maintain purity of the message. With spreadable viral media the focus is much greater on the agency of the consumers. Consumers accept the message and then re-purpose its content in a way that is meaningful to them and their social groups. Media that spreads fastest is that which is most easily appropriated to express meanings and interpretations f a variety of groups.
Therefore spreadable media quite often contains absurd humour or parody, feelings of nostalgia or require active participation.
IN my example of a strategically placed viral media campaign I have chosen “The man your man could smell like” by Old Spice.
The advert obviously relies most heavily on absurd humour. The actor in the advertisement Isaiah Mustafa, former NFL player, made is debut as the ‘old spice guy’ at the 2010 Superbowl. In the advert Mustafa delivers a fast paced funny monologue in front of a green screen which rapidly changes setting beginning in a bathroom and ending on a beach… on a horse. The reception of the video was overwhelmingly positive. In comments on youtube consumers enjoyed the humour of the advert and most responses were variations of the joke and style of the advert which had been re-purposed to create more jokes.
“look at your man – looks at empty wall…”
Obviously the adverts humour lends itself to being spreadable. As well as this consumer response seemed to acknowledge the advert as a ‘good’ advert. One that is new and exciting and therefore worth sharing with others. It takes on the character of a phenomenon that s rarely seen, a genuinely funny advertisement. For this reason people deem it to have worth and spread it among themselves.
From watching response videos to the advert this is also made clear.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mI8C_Lq9AOo&t=496s
Just as the comments suggest the focus of the consumers is on how funny the advert manages to be. As well as being ‘brilliant’ as a marketing strategy.
The advertisement was so successful that Old Spice profits went up 107% and the advertisement had reached 6.7 million views in 24 hours. This prompted a series of sequel videos. The popularity of the advert then led to several other television appearances for Mustafa, including the show Ellen. Old Spice then launched an online marketing campaign involving real-time exchange with the audience through a number of social networking sites and online communities including YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Reddit and Digg. During the 3-day long campaign, Mustafa replied to over 186 online comments and requests submitted by the viewers.
The advertisements success was then noticed by a number of well known web blogs that focused on technology and on business news including Urlesque, ReadWriteWeb, Fast Company, TechCrunch, Jezebel, Mashable and Geekosystem. Redditors, an online community then made a downloadable voicemail message site where people could download Mustafas voice for their home phones. Old spice then found this site and tweeted it.
A blog entry titled “And the ‘Oldspice Maneuver’ is created, by Ryan Winacko, a Canadian producer and broadcaster, that heralds the advertisement as groundbreaking. Finally the advert was featured in G4’s month-long popularity contest called MEMEFIGHT. This featured 32 internet memes reviewed and selected by a special panel of internet culture experts. Old Spice Guy won.
Clearly the spreadability of the Old Spice advert is clear. As we have seen it was picked up by a number of different online communities and its humour was appropriated and re-purposed so as to fit that artciuar community. However it was not only humour. Old Spice aslo became recognised for making a ‘good’ advert, somewhat of a novelty in a world where we are so inundated with marketing strategies. This allowed people to see both humour and worth in the campaign and so encouraged them to share it. In many cases the product itself was secondary but the memorability of the advertisement meant that Old Spice came from obscurity to a cultural icon of the internet generation.