Hand in hand with social networking, goes a trend that – as far as I know – actually started a little bit earlier than Facebook, Twitter, etc… Whereas several blogs such as Rochelle van der Linde‘s or Jennifer Labrie‘s touch on social networking in general, none address the actual techniques to apply marketing on the web.

The keyword of course, is, as stated already in the title of this blog, VIRAL MARKETING.

It is interesting how viral marketing increases steadily with the constant increase of usage of, for example, Facebook. People post videos, commercials, etc.  “It is the modern way of telling jokes.” If these few lines caught your attention so far, you should definitely check out this short article (only 3 pages!) and read three more, really interesting and easy to read, pages about viral marketing, why it is like telling a joke and how it becomes a success. The article actually goes even one step further and compares sending videos and commercials to friends to some sort of “social currency.

Also, a major advantage of viral marketing is that once a commercial is one the web, it is circulating. Whereas conventional posters and billboards will be taken off and replaced over time, the web can actually store information “eternally” and to very minimal cost (Remember that sending an Email or posting it on Facebook does not cost you anything – No sharing cost).

To make this viral marketing a little bit more…hm… viral, I would say that I should really contribute my part to its succes. So, here we go:

Smirnoff Vodka – Tea Partay (2006) (exceeding 6 mio. views as of Feb 6th, 2012)

WestJet – Owners Care (2010) (34,000 views as of Feb, 6th, 2012)

Having watched these two videos, I would like to point out mainly one thing: Even though the Tea Partay video already started circulating in 2006, it was a huge success, as can be partially seen by its views. The recent WestJet one was not as successful, probably partially because of the much higher competition in 2010 compared to 2006.

I would like to conclude this post by raising the awareness that although social networking has been becoming the biggest keyword most recently, it should not be forgotten that viral marketing has been out there, circulating on the web.

Recent economic crises have pushed general marketing trends broadly towards a focus on value-based marketing. Tim Berry, founder of Palo Alto Software, argues on his blog that: “We break the ice by criticizing someone else because that unites us.”

He relates back to negative marketing in his book “The Plan-As-You-Go Business Plan” and claims that the average dissatisfied customer tells close to 20 people about his customer experience, whereas the common delighted customer tells only 3 people.
Why is it that people prefer criticizing over complimenting? One way of looking at this is to consider the amount of information that we are being flooded with every day.
Think about it that way, in a conventional decision process model, a need is being created in the first place. Then, information research starts, including looking for alternatives. – Well, and here is where some businesses are trying to cut competitor’s throats.

The current consumer is used to be overwhelmed by products and advertisements. In the end, all he looks for is reasons to eliminate alternatives from the decision process. Therefore, I am convinced that the over-saturated consumer market plays a major role in the effectiveness of negative marketing.

Thinking about it from a company’s point of view, the effort of a company in actively degrading competitors’ brand image  instead of promoting its own one is relatively reasonable and close.

The extent of these negative commercial can go from funny and relatively harmless to very aggressive and attacking commercials. A well-known brand, which is known for regularly having to ban commercials that address the fight for customers with its major competitor, is Pepsi.

In our case, Pepsi and Coca Cola are both really big brands and it can be argued that negative marketing feeds a “healthy” competition.

Where things start to become more questionable, is when bigger brands have the market power to hinder smaller companies from catching up to them. In some case, this may even lead to the collapse of entire companies and the image they had created in their customer’s perception.

In case, someone wants to get a little more scholarly about this topic:
http://www.allbusiness.com/marketing-advertising/advertising/260512-1.html