Revolution UK, 3 April, 2002

Compelling content, clever seeding, careful tracking. This article by DMC’s managing director Justin Kirby looks at all the angles of online viral marketing and draws conclusions from the company’s wide experience of this technique.

OPINION: Viral seeding requires a careful approach

If brands are to fully benefit from viral marketing, they must combine gripping creative with intelligent seeding strategies and track results to make sure the activity reaches its target, writes DMC’s Justin Kirby.

Microsoft’s recent digital-before-TV release of its Xbox ad demonstrated that viral marketing is no longer a niche within a niche. For advertisers, it’s now not just a case of why and how much, but what works and how do you prove it?

What works in terms of spreadability is a combination of compelling content and clever seeding. And there is now tracking data available about viral marketing that dispels a lot of myths.

It’s true that black humour and sex sells, particularly if your target market is male and aged 18 to 34. However, Crackermatic’s ‘Create a cracker’ viral campaign and Butlins’ ‘Pop Supremo’ children’s activity both show you don’t have to use risque material to get a huge response.

Compelling and entertaining content exclusive to the web is required if it is to get passed on, but the web is not a media dump and users are less likely to pass on a viral agent if they have already seen it elsewhere, such as on TV.

A web-only policy is great for companies without the budgets for above-the-line work, as they can make material designed just for viral transmission and potentially reach millions in a cost-effective way. And, for their part, above-the-line advertisers without additional budgets for a viral creative can simply adopt a web-first policy, distributing their material virally online before releasing it on other mainstream channels.

Some say advertisers should do this anyway. There is so little to lose, even if results show the viral agent isn’t being spread around the web.

The reality is that clever seeding makes a low-to-no spread outcome practically impossible.

Even if results show few people are interested in a campaign, it can be used as a low-cost data-gathering exercise. Brand recognition and reach can be achieved for a minimal media cost, and the word-of-mouth endorsement generated by users passing on the material is any advertiser’s dream come true.

Microsoft’s Xbox clip clocked up more than 43,000 online views in under four weeks on internet movie guide and viral forum ifilm.com alone, and that was only one of a number of seeding points. It also garnered a lot of quantitative feedback.

Online viral campaigns are trackable and the data can reveal that anecdotal evidence is not reliable as the sole source of proof of spread. Don’t believe millions are passing around a viral just because many people say they have seen it or said they’ve received it several times from different sources. By examining IP numbers, it is often clear the clip is being passed around in a shrinking group interested in esoteric material, and that the frequency is not the result of material escaping into the wider internet.

The idea that you can simply send material to a handful of friends, agency contacts or a list of decision-influencers is becoming less credible.

An increasing amount of material is being unloaded on an audience that is more discerning. Data shows that material has to be seeded wider to get it to reach what Malcolm Gladwell describes as ‘the tipping point’ in his book of the same name about behavioural marketing. The tipping point is the point at which material gets passed on by users at an exponential rate, rather than among the sub-group of the ‘e-influencer’ community.

It is worth checking peer-to-peer weblog discussion forums such as blogger.com and blogdex.com and file transfer networks. Traffic increases may be the result of activity in this space, rather than the result of material doing the rounds via email. Specialist firms can seed viral material or at least include links and comments on weblogs, discussion forums and file transfer networks, as well as specialist seeding points.

This bottom-up approach can add huge value to a viral campaign, not least in search engine optimisation for those who may have heard about your material but haven’t been sent it. It can also be used effectively by advertisers without the budget for video or Flash-based content. If you do opt for this route, make sure you get quantitative as well as qualitative data.

Viral marketing may not be the digital advertising panacea that some claim, but it’s certainly worthwhile if approached scientifically and used as an accountable marketing technique.