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Viral Marketing Case Studies
UK-Netmarketing Weekly Round-up - May 11, 2001

Just exactly how do you go about 'viral marketing'? Who has been successful using this technique in the past, and more to the point does it actually work or is it more Internet bluster? Lisa Wood asked, "After his epochal rise to status of online marketing guru it seems there's now a Seth Godin viral marketing backlash and the unbelievers are questioning the effectiveness of viral marketing campaigns.

Is there anyone who can help me regain my faith in viral marketing and tell me of a successful campaign which has generated e-commerce revenue in its wake - I'm fully aware of the Napsters/Hotmails of this world so please no references to those, something a bit more tangible and realistic please. I've heard about the success of the Thomas Cook free hotels campaign a couple of years ago but can't find details, does anyone have any info on it to corroborate it's success?"

Chris Heathcoate replied, "Napster/MSN/AIM/ICQ are truly viral - the more people you encourage to join, the better the experience is for you. Most so-called 'viral marketing' campaigns are actually word-of-mouth campaigns. The basic premise of a word-of-mouth campaign is the same as for selling: you have to offer people something of genuine value."

Commenting on the Thomas Cook campaign, Chris continued, "...I got one of their Hotel Directories... the standard hoodwink 'have to buy breakfast and dinner' schemes. Didn't use it. Just getting 10,000 addresses for a one-shot offer isn't that hard. You should really be looking at how customer acquisition, retention, and value altered due to viral/w-o-m campaigns."

Stephen Pratley added, "I'm not surprised there's a backlash, but this is because of the number of suppliers and agencies punting hackneyed tell-a-friend competitions as 'viral'. There's nothing wrong with these campaigns per-se, but they're sold in with unrealistic expectations which tar the real thing ... Viral campaigns are a very specific type of communication which are hard, though not impossible, to generate intentionally. If you're one of the few who actually read the book rather than just the back cover you'll know what I mean. If not, maybe we can save you the time... Viral marketing doesn't make you money, customers do. There's a lot of work getting from one to the other."

Sally Krumholz suggested some resources, writing "Do a hunt on Digitrends. You'll find a few case studies there on 'viral marketing'. Personally I hate that term as 'viral' can be so negative. Try one-to-one marketing or grassroots or .... :) As for Mr. Godin, his book referred to Peppers & Rogers all the time. Go to the source & not the preacher I say."

Commenting on another successful campaign, Lindsey Pickles emailed, "Virgin, amongst others I know of, did a wine giveaway which was probably quite successful and generated ecommerce revenue, but how much revenue I wouldn't rightly know, (esp considering the cases were half price anyway)."

Chas Linn added, "I know of a Nescafe campaign which was very successful in creating a clean opt-in user database (30,0000) with lots of details given and some monster prizes at the end. Clever campaign, for details check New Media Age 8th Feb I think, got campaign of the week, or check out http://www.64k.co.uk/news/default.asp?story=36"

As the name suggests it not always the intentional campaigns that work best, as Claire Swires will no doubt testify. Ray Taylor suggested, "Wasn't 'I Love You' the most successful viral campaign?"

Tim Ireland replied, "Yes, but it didn't sell anything. Except maybe more virus software. Hang on, my conspiracy chip just kicked in. Do you think that maybe [paragraph deleted by Outlook Express]"

Nabil Shabka suggested some beneficiaries, "Computers and virus protection software I believe ;-)"

As did, Alex Chudnovsky, "On a serious note, this virus DID help sell a lot:

NON-RELATED sales of anti-virus software (obviously), but to understand how different were sales that you would have to see chart, which had a HUGE spike These sales were not related to virus author itself.

RELATED sales - this virus helped to sell well the guy who wrote it - he will surely get a decent job in security field (or will soon get to jail). Not that I would advise anyone to gain employment via this risky way.

Dave Smith added, "It also trashed the use of .exe flash game attachments that people were using for viral marketing. Anyone got any figures on the % of firewalls now refusing .exe's? Does anyone out there still open them?"

Chris Heathcoate explained some of the problems with sending round executable (.exe) files, "Anyone who does is mad. With the latest holes and bug finds in IE and NS, you'll see even more of a firewall lockdown on any attachments whatsoever. I don't see why marketing people are so against just putting a link in an email explaining the value of going there. That way people who are uninterested can just ignore it, rather than being forced to download the latest 5 Mb marketing sensation. Think of it as opt-in rather than opt-out..."

Viral marketing continues to be the buzz-word of the moment. With banner advertising currently out of fashion, the success of 'viral' campaigns like the Virgin cinema ticket giveaway are encouraging other marketers to test the water. Like a real-life virus, the danger comes when it is released into the wild: it's out of the marketing departments, and in the cases mentioned above can even mutate. However, with potentially phenomenal success rates, with little incremental spending, it's the flavour of the moment. The question is...how long is the moment?

LINKS OF NOTE:
A quick round up of interesting, funny, useful and other links gleaned from the uk-netmarketing list, office gossip and other nefarious sources...we take no responsibility should you chose to click...basically, it's not our fault. Enjoy:

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