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Creating a marketing campaign that goes viral is the aim of every marketer. In order to make our content go viral, a marketer should develop creative, engaging, and out of the box marketing campaign idea. The marketing space has become broader in the digital age by the presence of social media. 

About Viral Marketing 

The term “Viral Marketing” explains the phenomenon by which consumers mutually share and spread marketing-relevant information which was initially spread out deliberately by marketers to stimulate and capitalize word-of-mouth (WOM) behaviour (Lans et al.2010). Sharing online content is an integral part of modern life. Viral marketing tends to be more cost-efficient than traditional mass media advertising because it generally leaves the dispersion of marketing messages to consumers (Hinz et.al. 2011).

One of the successful viral marketing was done by American Greetings Corp. In 2014, this company launched a video entitled “The World’s Toughest Job”. 

The ad showcases a series of real job interviews for “director of operations”, an unpaid position that includes demands like standing up almost all the time, no vacations, and without any pay. The spot then goes on to reveal that billions of people currently hold this position: MOMS. 

What makes this video viral successfully? 

Sometimes we might wonder why certain pieces of online content are more viral than others. Companies create online ad campaigns in the hope that people will share the content with others. However, not every online marketing campaign has become viral. 

This ad video by American Greetings has three main aspects which make it viral : 

The content 

Certain content may be highly shared is because it has inherent value or contains useful information (Berger 2013). This video contains emotional aspects which express the value that the job as a mother is not easy. Initially, the audience might wonder what is the toughest job in the world, and then the interviewer explains the job description to the candidates which makes the audience keep asking “what crazy job is it?”. Finally, when the interviewer said that this is the job of moms, the audience might surprised and realized that the job of moms is definitely tough. 

People tend to like sharing emotionally charged content to make sense of their experiences, reduce dissonance, or deepen social connections (Peters and Kashima 2007). Also, people who want to share this video are caring about how they look to others (social currency) (Berger 2013). People share this video because they care or want to be seen that they care abuout moms. 

The timing

This video was launched on the Mother’s day. The content of this video about moms is matched with the current event. The timing of launching e-WOM is critical to generate desired impact to our marketing campaign. Launch e-WOM at the early stage of product launch increases product sales (Liu 2006). 

The channels

American Greetings uploaded this video via several social media channels, such as YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and their organic website. In the YouTube channel, they gained more than 11 thousand comments and 162 thousand likes. It is crucial to understand the type of social media channel which is used by the target audience. 

The ad created by Mullen Lowe has drawn more than 27 million views. In addition, this marketing campaign has successfully increased sales for mother’s greeting cards orders by 20% (Suttell 2015). 

Marketing Implications 

From this ad video of “The World’s Toughest Job”, there are three main aspects which impact the success of their content to go viral, such as content, timing, and channels. Moreover, we should also consider 6 principles to create viral content by Jonah Berger (2013) :

Social currency: People share things that make them look good. As a marketer, we should think how to make target audience want to share a piece of content you create. 

Triggers: Create a content related to everyday situations. Consider the context so that people are frequently triggered to think about your idea or product. 

Emotion: People share experiences that make them happy, sad, confused, and angry. Emotional content often goes viral, so focus on feeling. 

Public: The more public something is, the more likely people imitate it. Design content that can advertise themselves. 

Practical Value: Useful things get shared. Highlight incredible value and expertise so that people can share it. 

Stories: Create a narrative or story that people want to tell which carries your idea along for the ride.

In conclusion, viral marketing is a relatively easy and inexpensive way to spread your business’ marketing campaign compared to traditional advertising. However, to be successful in viral marketing, we should do research about the target audience, the trend going on, and the content idea. When people will love your content, they will be happy to share and make it viral! 

References 

Berger, J. 2013. Contagious: how to build word of mouth in the digital age. London: Simon & Schuster. 

Hinz, O. et al. 2011. Seeding Strategies for Viral Marketing: An Empirical Comparison. Journal of Marketing75(6), pp. 55–71. 

Lans, R.V.D. et al. 2010. A Viral Branching Model for Predicting the Spread of Electronic Word of Mouth. Marketing Science29(2), pp. 348–365. 

Liu, Y. 2006. Word of Mouth for Movies: Its Dynamics and Impact on Box Office Revenue. Journal of Marketing70(3), pp. 74–89. 

Peters, K. and Kashima, Y. 2007. From social talk to social action: Shaping the social triad with emotion sharing. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology93(5), pp. 780–797

Marketing strategy has been practised by many corporations of any type and any size. In order to be successful in the era of digitalization, a company should take into account the existence of a content marketing. Content Marketing has become a leading marketing technique to develop a relationship with customers by creating and sharing engaging content. 

Content Marketing in brief

“Content marketing is the marketing and business process for creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire, and engage a clearly defined and understood target audience with the objective of driving profitable customer action” (Content Marketing Institute 2015).

Producing the valuable content that pulls the customers in is not just a piece of cake. There should be brilliant ideas which make the content marketing as an asset; being able to make the customers want to find the company.

One company which has done a compelling content marketing strategy is Ben & Jerry’s. This blog post will focus on the Ben & Jerry’s Instagram account (@benandjerrys). 

There are three main reasons why Ben and Jerry’s has good content marketing:

It provides values

Ben and Jerry’s concerns to maintain its social consciousness. There are some issues that they care about, for example, democracy, racial justice, climate change, poverty, and human rights.

Graphic 1: Ben & Jerry’s social mission. Source: https://www.instagram.com/p/BgPFNzvj9jh/?hl=en&taken-by=benandjerrys

Ben & Jerry’s wants to create positive impacts on important social movements. Jay Curley, Senior Global Marketing Manager of Ben & Jerry’s said that “We are trying to create a new model for how businesses can use their voice to have an impact on important social movements, and show that you can do that and it doesn’t hurt your business. As a matter of fact, it may help” (Bowe 2017).

To engage consumers in social media, the content should be relevant to the target audience (Chauhan and Pillai 2013). Ben & Jerry’s provides its content by creating engaging content in social media which the issue is interesting to their target audience, especially young generation.

It shares useful information

The audience might find it is interesting when they find a recipe and eat ice cream in a different way. One of Instagram posts by Ben and Jerry’s showed how to make vegan chocolate strawberry shortcake.

Graphic 2: Recipe by Ben and Jerry’s. Source: https://www.instagram.com/p/BXYYGgFDhBQ/?hl=en&taken-by=benandjerrys

There are many positive comments from their followers that they want to make it and they mentioned their friends to make it together. Useful information is important as the audience an share it to their friends. The company will get positive impacts, such as engagement, awareness, increase loyalty, and also increase customer satisfaction (Kingsnorth 2016).

It engages and strengthens relationships

The powerful posts are not a one-way megaphone but invitations for the meaningful dialogues with the audience. By simply asking questions and creating a quiz might be intriguing for the audience to give feedback or comments.

Graphic 3: Quiz to get free ice cream. Source: https://www.instagram.com/p/BhZoDcIjAJ3/?hl=en&taken-by=benandjerrys

Ben & Jerry’s free ice cream quiz is one of the good examples to increase engagement. Research indicates that users engage most with brand posts that are consistent, interactive, and vivid (Tafesse 2015)

All in all, Ben & Jerry’s has a strong content marketing strategy. The other brands can learn that Ben & Jerry’s shows that they are not just an ice cream company. They give values to their customers and capitalize the word of mouth advertising and fierce brand loyalty. Also, social media is important to be well-managed as many people nowadays use social media in their daily life. Ben & Jerry’s has been successful in creating social media communities which the audience communicates around the brand and there are social interactions among the community members. As a consequence of these strategies, Ben & Jerry’s sales tripled over the past 15 years which makes it the Anglo-Dutch conglomerate’s fastest growing ice cream brand (Zhu 2016).

References:

,,B2B Content Marketing. 2015. Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends-North America. Content Marketing Institute. Available at: http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/2015_B2B_Research.pdf.

Bowe, M.2017. The Ben & Jerry’s Marketing Manager Who Believes an Ice-Cream Company Can Change the World [Online] Available at:  http://nymag.com/thejob/2017/04/ben-and-jerrys-marketer.html. [Accessed: 18 May 2018].

Chauhan,K and Pillai, A.2013. Role of content strategy in social media brand communities: a case of higher education institute in India. Journal of Product & Brand Management22(1), pp.40-51.

Kingsnorth, S.2016.Digital marketing strategy: an integrated approach to online marketing. London: Kogan Page.

Tafesse, W.2015.Content strategies and audience response on Facebook brand pages. Marketing Intelligence & Planning33(6),pp.927-943.

Native advertising has been adopted by many publishers because it is viewed as a promising alternative to traditional advertising, for both advertisers and news media or other publishers. However, native advertising is also a controversial topic as many critics have stated that this form of advertising blurs the boundaries between commercial and editorial or we can say camouflaging ads as news.

Native Advertising Explained 

Federal Trade Commission (2015) stated that native advertising is the content that presents a similarity to news, entertainment, featured articles, product reviews, and other content in digital media. In some way, native advertising is created to attract the audience to be interested in the content which contains an ad inside.

There are several forms of native advertising. Here are some examples:

Graphic 1: The paid content on The Telegraph website. Source: https://bit.ly/2IAgDRe

On this page, there is no explicit information that it is paid content or sponsored. However, The Telegraph wrote some lists of best hotels in Europe and the readers can check the availability of the hotels. When it is clicked, it directs us to the website of booking.com.

Graphic 2: Samantha Maria (Youtuber) was shopping and trying Zara’s New Outfit. Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y61-tGUpFH4

In this video, Samantha also puts some links that direct to Zara’s online store and the audience who interested in the outfit can easily access Zara’s online store to make a purchase. In addition, Samantha also wrote a disclaimer that she received a small percentage from a sale via that link.

Graphic 3: Gigi Hadid (model) – Paid Partnership with Movado promoted Tommy Hilfiger watches. Source: www.instagram.com/gigihadid/

If you scroll the photos of Gigi Hadid in Instagram, the native advertising is blended with her personal post. You should open the particular photos in order to know that it is an ad.

Graphic 4: Native advertising in the Facebook feed.

It was captured from the writer’s Facebook news feed. This post is blended with the other news feed from the writer’s friends.

From the examples above, people might need some seconds or minutes to be aware that it is native advertising. At the first glance, the ads are identical with the other contents. It is linear with the statement of Campbell & Marks (2015) stated that the native advertising is almost identical as the other online contents and non-disruptive to the user’s online experience so that it gives consistent enjoyment experience to the consumer.

Is native advertising a deceptive practice?

In order to answer this question, we should know the relationship between law, self-regulation, and ethics. Advertisers are not entirely permitted to free speech. Federal Trade Commission (2015) has created a guide for businesses, especially for native advertising. There are three main rules of native advertising. Firstly, An advertisement or promotional message should not suggest or imply to customers that it is anything other an ad. Secondly, a disclosure is necessary to ensure that customers understand that the content is advertising. Thirdly, a disclosure must be clear and prominent.

However, the study of Media Radar (2016) examined that 37% of digital publishers are not native compliant and thus risking reputation and revenue. The businesses need to know and obey the policy to ensure that their native advertising is not deceptive. According to Meyer (2004), an advertisement is valuable when the environment it is embedded is discerned as credible. If the audience cannot perceive the native content from editorial content, and they might feel deceived, fundamentally it will be viewed as less credible.

Credibility is important for both advertisers and publishers. In terms of contemporary media, native advertising could be an issue of their credibility as independent media which can potentially threaten journalism’s credibility: the separation between editorial and advertising, as well as the social responsibility as a press (Levi, 2015). However, Carlson (2015b) stated that the effectiveness of native advertising lies in its ability to look like a content created by journalist, thus the sponsored content gives suggestion to the audience that the ad is endorsed by journalists.

In conclusion, native advertising is a good way to create brand awareness, increase engagement with the consumer, and could escalate the sales. Nevertheless, in order to be called ethical, native advertising publishers should follow the ethics guideline while creating native advertising. Also, native advertising puts forward its content, so that the native ads should have good quality and beneficial content to the consumer which can significantly increase brand engagement and visitor satisfaction at the same time.

Have you thought about native journalism? A talk show of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver might entertain you: 

References :

Campbell, C. and Marks, L.J. 2015. Good native advertising isn’t a secret. Business Horizons 58(6), pp. 599–606.

Carlson, M. 2015b. When news sites go native: Redefining the advertising–editorial divide in response to native advertising. Journalism, 16, 849-865.

Federal Trade Commission. 2015. Native advertising: A guide for businesses. Retrieved from https://www.ftc.gov/tipsadvice/business-center/guidance/native-advertisingguide-businesses.

Levi, L. 2015. A “Faustian pact”? Native advertising and the future of the press. Arizona Law Review, 57, 647-711.

Media Radar 2017. Leaders and Lessons in Native Advertising. Media Radar.

Hello! My name is Gita. Currently, I am studying Media Management (MBA) at Cardiff University. Talking about media, I have more than seven years work experience in media, from radio to television in Indonesia. Before I came to the UK for my postgraduate study, I worked as CNN Indonesia Correspondent. It is interesting to be engaged in broadcasting media because it is always dynamic, pushes me to be innovative and creative.

Besides broadcasting media, I am interested in digital media. It is compelling when I see the fact that technology is changing rapidly and it also influences the way people behave and think. In the business perspective, digital media plays an outstanding role, for example, because of technology and digital media, many people prefer online shopping than visiting the store. Consumers have become more critical to choose the product they need/like. Therefore, it is challenging to the company to keep innovating in order to win the market. Studying digital media management is interesting because it gives me knowledge and skills how to manage the business as well as digital media which always evolving.

Last but not least, I am an open-minded person who always wants to explore the world. I love travelling, food, movie, music, photography, and meeting new people. So, if you would like to have a chat about such topics or any other things, do not hesitate to pop me a message. :)