Doing a Viral Campaign Right Ain't Cheap, or Easy

BL,

Great post, I agree that viral marketing is neither as cheap, nor as straightforward as it appears. We did some detailed research on viral marketing that I thought you would be interested in: http://h20325.www2.hp.com/blogs/kintz/archive/2006/09/17/1612.html

Eric

BLO: I tend to agree with you my man. A savvy cross mix of media is one of the killer apps that can be used for Viral Marketing activity.

But there is a secret:

I agree that lame viral campaigns abound - most folks in the business just don't seem to get it.

BUT 'Lonely Girl' on YouTube has received a massive cover without much of a 'paid for' cross-media platform connection. I don't think they spent much on PR at all. That was all free. The secret lies within that success: It was a fake of course - setting up the fake cost a few dollars. But relatively speaking it cost virtually nothing.

I know about this. I have created a viral campaign that generated over a million hits in less than a month. I also sold over 300,000 copies of my book too. (That was not a fake!) I did partly use other media as you describe, but the big viral effect originated from my forum; People passed my story around the internet and arrived at the forum in increasing numbers to see what all the noise was about.

So while I agree that it 'aint necessarily easy', if you are educated about how it all works, then I believe that the sky is the limit.

Rich article thanks BLO.

Jonathan Gunson

BL,
Very astute analysis. It is sometimes easy for people who spend much time working on internet marketing to forget that there are multiple channels available for getting the word out.

And that integrating online and off line methods into a cohesive whole will always be more effective then just using one channel.

I agree, it's just not true - good viral campaigns can be more costly then traditional media production if done right. Virals must still reach target audience, achieve specific goals and that takes experience, research, creativity, production and execution which is not cheap... "buyer beware" of anyone who pitches you cheap. Cheap is a dirty word!

I tell clients you save on the media buy. Which can be hundreds of thousands of dollars. But encourage them to spend 25% what they would on a standard media buy and put it towards offline marketing, street events or publicity.

To any of my agency friends reading this who don’t have clients with budgets under one million, yeah I know, you’re not the norm!

The Bazooka Campaign dosn't look cheap, are you privy to the details of the campaign or just using it as a springboard?

Also, I was confused. I found a pages of videos on MySpacem, YouTube, and the Bazooka blog itself that have been posted for months?

I also did a little digging and found that they have reached out to schools and incorporated the making of the video as part of it’s street outreach program.

The fact that the kids were singing the brands name in the isles of the bus (lol, where do you live? I thought that only happened on MTV and here in New York City) I thought that would be considered a success?

What do you think the goal was fro this campaign?

I am commenting with wet hair, as I was in the shower humming that Bazooka song, I realized then I had to post this.

Keep up the good work, a fan of your blog. Hope your eye gets better.

Hi
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I saw your post about the Bazooka Joe video contest, so I used Second Life to make a machinima film. I posted it on Youtube and