Feature: "Seeding" viral

By its ease of use, rapid dissemination and low cost, email has always been a powerful marketing tool and with the potential for unlimited forwarding, its viral nature has long been apparent.

In 2000, viral e-mail became headline news when hapless city worker Claire Swires exclaimed a penchant for a lewd sex act to a male colleague via e-mail, he forwarded it on to his friends and within 48 hours this e-mail had been circulated around the globe and its subject matter discussed on the Ten O’Clock News.

For marketers, emulating the Swires e-mail offers a level of exposure for their brand that no traditional campaign could match. Virals have been high on the agenda for brand owners and agencies ever since.

An example of how the Swires model has been exploited recently is the pre-Christmas Threshers campaign, a simple 40% off coupon was vigourously e-mailed as booze-hungry consumers looked forward to getting sozzled on the cheap at Christmas. There was debate in the national press whether this deal really was good value or a cynical twist on an existing offer, thus generating more intrigue in the brand and its products.

As consumers have become more familiar with email and more wary of their attachments, marketers have had to look at other ways of harnessing the power of the internet to enable viral marketing campaigns. It is now common to host text, images, video, audio or flash games which appeal to consumers enough to make them want to show their discovery to others. These various file types have collectively become known as ‘virals’.

Brand owners can start a viral campaign by simply sending an email to their e-mail list pointing to a ‘viral’ hosted on their servers. They are just one click away from the user interacting with their product and a second click away from a user sending on the experience to a friend.

An effective viral can spread like wildfire, however, to ensure success the viral destination must be compelling.

‘Seeding’ is vital if you don’t have an extensive e-mail list. Placing a viral with an established aggregator will increase your chances of success, the big-guns such as www.kontraband.com (video and pictures) and www.gamegarage.co.uk (flash games) will charge a fee to promote your product to their enormous user bases.

There are many innovative ways to get your brand to market, and agencies such as edpic (www.edpic.com) specialise in creating viral marketing campaigns. Services can include placing your content strategically across the web, creating a presence for your brand on social networking sites and even leaking a great promotion to consumer websites.

With the growth of User Generated Content destination sites, there is nothing stopping you from adding your viral videos to www.youtube.com and www.revver.com or posting links to a game in popular gaming forums. A trait of web 2.0 is the ease of sharing content, as most websites, such as video sharing site www.metacafe.com, will host your content and supply code and instructions on how seed your product to other popular social networks, such as MySpace, Blogger, Xanga and Friendster. Again, the success is determined by the strength of your campaign.

Branded flash games are incredibly popular at the moment, edpic are specialists in creating bespoke flash games for brand owners and media clients working with brands as varied as the over-50s demographic of Saga to the mass market appeal of Virgin Media and Aardman Films. There are many options, budget permitting of course! Existing flash games can be reskinned, but what is the point of doing something that has already been done before?

Beware of companies who outsource their development or pass-off reskinned games as their own, there are grey areas with ownership. It may be a cheaper option, but there is a lot of trust involved if you are hiring a developer who is based in a different time zone and is reluctant to recode their game to make it ‘on brand’.

Flash game development doesn’t have to break the bank or be particulary time-consuming. On average, an agency like edpic can develop a game from conception to completion in a matter of weeks. Remember merely developing a game or viral asset is just the beginning, integration with a client website, seeding the viral and fulfilling data capture requirements are all part of the campaign.

There is a buzz of excitement about developing new viral campaigns at the moment as agencies compete to outdo each other in entertaining the online audience.

It’s a great time for viral marketing at the moment as developing technology enables us to do more and more. It’s also great as often it’s a creative process that a client invests heavily into. When you’re dealing with traditional marketing and promotional methods things can get stoic, but the innovation behind a great viral can often give the brand managers a boost.

If you’re still not convinced; take a look at two great virals of recent months from very different organizations. The British Heart Foundation produced a great viral for Valentine’s day where you could send a sexy audio message to friend or lover by choosing from a library of softly-spoken words (http://givealovenote.com/). Cobra beer took this concept to the next level where you could dub funny phrases over some dodgy seventies kung-fu footage (http://www.tigerfilmdub.com/).

Mark Doyle is head of Digital Media at edpic - a leading Digital Services agency specialising in web and mobile.