mad.co.uk, 20 Dec 2005

Viral marketing has matured well beyond the ubiquitous use of viral video advertising and online advergame promotions. But have marketers kept up with the play?

According to [DMC's MD Justin Kirby], viral marketing has grown up. But have you?

Viral marketing as we know it is over a decade old. Its first milestone was in the mid-1990s when digital media started coming into its own and Hotmail went from 0 to 12 million users within 18 months, thanks to a little text ad at the bottom of its user-generated emails.

The next milestone was at the turn of the century when the dotcom collapse squeezed marketing purses and put the onus on accountability. Marketers equated viral (user-driven and therefore largely free media communications) with cheap and jumped on the bandwagon.

Milestone three has hit over the past couple of years. Consumers have learned to tune out a lot of marketing communications and they have become more involved than ever before in controlling message delivery globally, thanks to the rise of digital media such as blogs and forums. Advertisers are therefore finding it increasingly difficult to stand out from the clutter across fragmented media, and find and connect with today’s more cynical, marketing-savvy consumers.

Despite the clear need to embrace user-centric connected marketing approaches such as viral marketing, the adoption and integration of viral marketing into the mainstream marketing mix has been largely disappointing, limited and unimaginative. Most viral marketing output is better described as contagious advertising, and it is measured simply by the extent to which the creative material has been seen, rather than by what happens after people see the material (did it shift any product, did it increase brand advocacy rates, etc).

Viral marketing successes therefore currently have less to do with adding to a brand’s bottom line and more to do with creating low-cost brand awareness. They achieve the latter predominantly by leveraging user-driven online media and people’s social networks, rather than using paid-for media. Strange then that many brands and ad agencies still view the distribution or ’seeding’ of viral advertising in terms of traditional media buying. As ever, old habits die hard!

But perhaps this shortsighted perception of viral marketing is not really so surprising. A lot of marketers are inherently lazy - they have their heads in the sand. Their adoption of new marketing channels (think the internet), media (think mobile phones) and approaches (think banner advertising) tends to follow the same old path: mapped onto traditional advertising models based around conventional creative execution and media buying.

The problem for brands that are adopting a limited mainstream approach to viral marketing is that other more forward-thinking brands have moved on and realised that viral marketing is a means to end, not an end in itself. To stand out from the growing clutter of wannabe viral marketing campaigns churned out by the masses, brands must be more groundbreaking and creative in their use of digital media. The movers and shakers - Crispin, Porter + Bogusky, Virgin Mobile et al - are taking a more connected marketing approach to their use of viral marketing. They use viral initiatives to ignite conversations among consumers in order to help improve brand advocacy rates (and their bottom line), rather than simply to spread a buzz about a creative execution.

One of the key lessons marketers should have learned over the past decade is that viral marketing - especially when used as an integrated rather than isolated approach - can both improve brand advocacy and increase mass-market brand awareness. It can be used successfully to create a buzz about any brand or product and to help generate sales.

Nowadays, viral marketing is no longer a hit-or-miss quest for that one groundbreaking idea; it’s about conducting successful connected marketing activity through an organised series of decisions and approaches. It focuses on personal experience of the brand and taps into the new power of consumers and their connections to other consumers.

The sooner more marketers play catch-up and grasp this reality the better. And the maturing of connected marketing approaches such as viral marketing won’t stop there. One of our predictions for the future is that viral, buzz and word of mouth marketing techniques will be increasingly used in customer relationship management programmes as tools for both retention and acquisition (turning buyers into brand advocates).

Don’t just watch this space - fill it.