Justin Kirby on the strategic synthesis in peer-to-peer brand marketing
If you're selling the next iPod or another product that has an inherent wow factor, you can stop reading now. But if your brand, service or product is not so one-in-a-million, read on - you can still generate massive peer-to- peer endorsement.
Ever since marketers acknowledged there's too much advertising (so people have learned to tune it out), and too many media channels (which makes it harder for advertisers to reach their now-fragmented audiences), they've been looking for alternative ways to get consumers to buy into their brand and buy their products.
Most of the solutions being explored try to re-engage and interact with consumers in an old-style, 'top-down' approach, whereby Above-The-Line (ATL) mainstream media activities focusing on the brand are driving the communication.
Yet one of the most credible solutions to the 'much advertising no longer works' problem is word-of-mouth marketing, whose raison d'tre is encapsulated by Malcolm Gladwell: "The most powerful selling of products and ideas takes place not marketer to consumer but consumer to consumer."
The 21st century, 'bottom-up' word-of-mouth marketing approach focuses on personal experience of the brand and is driven by consumers.
As Intelliseek (www.intelliseek.com) points out, online Consumer Generated Media such as blogs and forums have helped supercharge word-ofmouth marketing communications.
Brands such as P&G with their 'Tremor' initiative have been taking advantage of this and using influencer-based, word-of-mouth approaches to generate peer-to-peer product recommendations.
However, this kind of word-of-mouth marketing can be expensive - it involves a lot of fieldwork and complex factors such as knowing that there is a big difference between opinion formers and opinion spreaders. Ultimately, as Steve Knox from P&G's 'Tremor' initiative admitted at the recent Ad:Tech in San Francisco, the problem with word-of-mouth marketing is that it only truly works if the product has some inherent wow factor that people want to talk about. Let's face it, there's nothing inherently sticky about lemonade, for example, as a product unless you spill it on your suit!
So word-of-mouth marketing is by no means a complete panacea for the 'much advertising no longer works' problem. This is why marketers are now turning to online viral marketing, the flipside of the word-of-mouth coin. Online viral marketing kills two birds with one stone:
1. It avoids the need to have a product with a wow factor in order to raise awareness, generate buzz and kickstart peer-to-peer spread. Instead, the viral campaign's communication agent - often video-based advertainment content - is the element that needs a wow factor.
2. While it is closer to traditional advertising than word-of-mouth, (because it delivers classic ATL drivers - such as increased awareness and premium brand building - rather than directly delivering product recommendations), it is not an interruptive technique and it doesn't 'buy' exposure. Instead, viral campaigns 'work' the Internet to deliver exposure via peer-to-peer endorsement. The focus is on campaigns with material that consumers want to spend time interacting with and spreading proactively. So in this way online viral marketing provides the missing link between the word-of-mouth approach and the top-down, advertainment approach to brand marketing.
Not a stand alone tactic but a strategic means to an end.
In employing online viral marketing to generate peer-to-peer endorsement, brands have also learned that the technique should not be considered as a standalone miracle worker.
James Kydd, brand director for Virgin Mobile which has just launched the seventh release in their successful series of online viral and buzz marketing campaigns, states:
"Online viral marketing is best used not as a one-off tactical end in itself, but as an integrated strategic part of the overall marketing mix.
"It's a means to an end whereby it not only generates buzz, but also provides ongoing, quantifiable brand benefits, such as increased awareness, peer-to-peer endorsement and ultimately more sales."
For example, the Trojan Games online viral marketing campaign (www.trojangames.co.uk), with its award winning sex-and-games spoof video content by The Viral Factory, has been seen by over 25 million people globally since the site launch in October 2003. In its first month alone, over 6 million people visited the site. (Only sites such as Google, MSN, Yahoo and the BBC reach more people over such a time period.) Other brand benefits were revealed in a survey by consumer marketing firm QuickWise (www.QuickWise.co.uk):
77% recalled the Trojan brand after seeing the campaign
73% gave a positive rating of the campaign's overall impression
80% perceived the campaign to be unique
50% would be more likely to consider the Trojan brand after seeing the campaign
Another successful example of using online viral marketing as a means to an end, to deliver not only buzz but also tangible brand benefits, is Mazda's 'Parking' campaign (http://www.mazdamovies.com). Using a film clip by Maverick Media, the campaign struck a major chord with online users, sparking global debate on blogs and forums about male and female parking capabilities. (For example, "All I can say is clever, very clever. Now let's see her get out.") It was voted Best Viral Campaign of 2003 in the UK's Campaign magazine and its German counterpart. Globally, the campaign generated over a million quantified clip views in less than a month and helped sell a product that is very similar to many others in its class.
As Steve Jelliss, CRM Manager for Mazda Motors (UK), stated: "Our ongoing series of online viral marketing campaigns have proven their value in providing high brand exposure to a wide-as-possible audience, and ultimately contributing to car sales."
Hot on the heels of Mazda comes Ford with their Sportka Evil Twin 'Pigeon' online viral campaign. Its advertainment content by The Viral Factory showed a pigeon being knocked out (or possibly killed). The campaign raised a great deal of buzz, including pages of chat on car forums, complaints from pigeon fanciers and very high-profile overspill into offline media. It culminated in a ten-minute feature on automotive TV show 'Top Gear', one of the BBC's most watched programmes, where the presenters raced a SportKa against a pigeon over 100 miles. (The pigeon won.) You just can't buy that kind of editorial coverage. Ultimately, the major brand benefit was the high-profile repositioning of a product that is not a particular stand-out in its class, but has now been given a harder edge.
Even smaller brands can benefit
The recent online viral marketing campaign for Bullguard (www.bullguard.com/pamelaspeak) proves that you don't need to be a big brand to make this technique work. Bullguard makes anti-virus and firewall software and distributes their product only online. They created a viral campaign with Go Viral (www.goviral.com) using a home-video-style clip and specialist viral site seeding. The campaign has generated 6-7 million clip views and over 30,000 post-view trial product downloads globally in under seven months. On the brand benefit front, it has doubled Bullguard's Google search results, increased the number of dealers endorsing and selling their products (offline now as well as online), and repositioned the brand as the 'young rebel' in the security software industry.
Three key factors will increase the likelihood of a successful online viral marketing campaign:
appropriate wow factor material that users want to seek out, talk about and pass on of their own freewill
appropriate specialist seeding to places where users already gather
strategically planned use of the technique as a means to an end
Some high-profile cases illustrate the risks brands take when venturing to use online viral marketing without fully understanding these factors. For example, the infamous Dr. Pepper 'Raging Cow' online viral campaign generated a backlash from the blogging community for what was perceived at best as a clumsy infiltration of a tight-knit community.
Janis Mara of ClickZ News notes: "Dr. Pepper showered teen bloggers with gifts and indoctrinated them on how to blog its new Raging Cow beverage. The plot backfired, with a well-publicized boycott and global media covering the debacle."
Ironically, online influencers may have liked the product; they just didn't like having users wonder about the integrity of their site content. Blogger Carlo Orozco was quoted in The New York Times : "The day after ragingcow.com went public, I sent out an e-mail to the other five bloggers and told them, 'You know, we sold out?'. The e-mails I got back were like, 'At least I'm enjoying the drink.' The funny thing is, I do like it. But my credibility is gone."
A more recent example that illustrates the risks of engaging and empowering users to drive peer-to-peer brand endorsement was a rehashed, Carlsberg-branded viral email sent around during the UEFA EURO 2004 football tournament (http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/funny_old_game/3815633.stm). The well-known Carlsberg 'probably the best' creative theme begs user imitation in the same vein as Mastercard's 'Priceless' theme - and the original email was unsurprisingly hijacked somewhere along the viral trail when the words 'Shame their lager tastes like p*ss' were added to the punch line.
Remember the ultimate goal: delivering brand benefits
Specialist seeding expertise can be found, and appropriate wow factor viral material is not impossible to create. But not every brand remembers during planning that the point of a viral campaign is not only to 'go viral', but also to benefit the brand strategically.
Ford has recently experienced this with an allegedly unauthorised viral campaign, Sportka Evil Twin 'Cat' (www.ifilm.com/viralvideo?ifilmid=2633283), in which a video clip shows a cat seemingly decapitated by the car's sunroof. This was extremely controversial, generating massive exposure online and offline. Ultimately the campaign helped to raise a lot of brand awareness and reposition the non-stand-out car as a gnarly sports 'beast'. So there may be a short-term gain for the product - but how much wider or longer-term brand alienation has occurred?
Another example of an online viral campaign that misses a trick or two on the brand benefit front is Burger King's 'Subservient Chicken' (www.subservientchicken.com). The campaign uses an interactive video of a man dressed as a chicken in a humorous take on webcam activity. The product it aims to promote is a new chicken sandwich, which in itself does not inspire user-driven, word-of-mouse activity. Instead, the viral agent delivers this, having been seen by 46 million people according to Burger King. On the down side, how many visitors realised that the campaign was for a chicken sandwich, or indeed for Burger King rather than Kentucky Fried Chicken or A. N. Other? As AdAge.com asks (April 15, 2004), "...will it make the flagging burger giant cool again with young men - or even sell sandwiches?" This campaign is in danger of having generated a character that outshines the brand, la Levi's Flat Eric. Again, it illustrates that wow factor advertainment content and high exposure is not enough; viral campaigns must also deliver strategic brand benefits, otherwise their value is hit-and-miss, or at best only short-term.
In conclusion, online viral marketing is definitely shaping up as a credible, strategic synthesis between word-of-mouth techniques and top-down advertainment-style approaches to brand marketing. Used wisely, with a strategic end goal in mind, it can be a key success driver within any brand's overall marketing activity.
- Justin Kirby is managing director of www.dmc.co.uk. Contact online@dmc.co.uk
© Gulf Marketing Review 2005
