VIRAL MARKETING

VIRAL MARKETING

How many times have you sent a friend some interesting link because you found it funny? Or how many times have you heard about an advertising never watched on TV? All these situations are not experienced by chance; they are part of companies’ marketing strategies. Currently that new technologies such as the internet have acquired more importance in the area of mass communication, firms have realized that a broad range of opportunities are available for attracting large social networks for free. They benefit from a word-of-mouth process done by millions of Internet users which consists of transmitting a message, an event or a promotion so as to produce increases in brand awareness. This is known as viral marketing.

The field for marketers has completely changed within the last 15 years. Now, they must imagine and improvise to win because traditional ways of doing marketing are not as effective as they used to be. Marketers as well as all manufacturers want to find their economics of scale and scope and the cheapest way to do it is by trusting potential customers as they are totally involved in the success of the companies; they not only purchase products but also influence others’ brand perceptions and purchase behaviors. Nevertheless, marketers must be careful using viral marketing because it could seriously damage the image of their companies if campaigns are not developed properly at the appropriate time.

What makes viral marketing special is that it can be used for everyone. It doesn’t matter the size of the company or the recognition of the firm, the critical aspect that makes viral marketing successful is the ability marketers have to create in order to appeal their target. For instance, I could create an ad promoting a local Spanish brand and email it to my immediate friends and clients. Once they received it, they would have the possibility to email it to the people they know. Therefore, just encouraging others to email my ad I would be able to create the potential required for exponential growth of my brand awareness. Assuming that half of my network -70 people- would email my ad to 30 people each, I would effectively reach 2100 potential customers. Now, imagine what would happen if these 2100 potential customers did exactly the same. Without any cost or effort my viral marketing campaign would have an impressive impact on the overall performance of the company.

Although important and necessary, financing issues are not the most relevant anymore. In the 80’s appearing on TV was enough to get popularity but currently marketers have to deal with a lot of substantial changes. They, first of all, must segment the target market they want to persuade and then explore all the alternatives available to find out which fits their specific needs. Develop an entire marketing campaign is not an easy thing and not always viral marketing helps marketers obtain valuable information or the expected benefits.

Summarizing, viral marketing can be useful to all kind of companies; small ones can be more easily recognized while big ones can use it as a complement of other marketing campaigns. However, marketers must understand that although its benefits are commonly recognized, this is just another tool to carry out their job efficiently but not the essential one.

THE PERSUADERS

THE PERSUADERS

Have you ever noticed that your purchasing decisions are taken unconsciously? Have you ever felt analyzed while you are shopping? I suppose that the majority of people have never thought about that. However, Dr. Rapaille, a recognized marketer guru, believes that we (consumers) are driven by unconscious needs, impulses and associations. Dr. Rapeille has been analyzing the behavior of customers for a long time. Moreover, he has been cooperating with a broad range of major companies with the objective to find out the hidden desires of consumers.

As far as his opinion is concerned, the key assumption in his researches is that he doesn’t believe in what people say, he only believes in what people do. He highlights that everybody has a mental code which lies very deep in our brains. Therefore, to analyze accurately the customers’ real preferences which lead them to purchase and to decode their mental associations, he identified and developed a 3 stage technique: PAST REASON, THROUGH EMOTION AND TO THE PRIMAL CORE.

- Reason: when Dr. Rapaille starts a focus group, he lets participants talk about a product, an idea or a topic. Although they usually think they are making a good job, he uses this initial stage not as a way to study their insights but as a way to prepare the field for the following stages.

- Emotion: This step consists of letting participants tell an invented story. In the example shown in the video, they had to tell a story as if they were trying to explain it to a 5 year old from another planet. The main purpose in this step is to persuade them not to be logical and reasonable anymore so as to let their imagination run wild. In this stage focus group members feel disoriented as they don’t understand the meaning of such a strange activity. Nevertheless, this is an essential step to achieve Dr. Rapaille goal.

- Primal core: in this final step, Dr. Rapaille looks for the members’ primal insights. The way he arranges everything drives them to feel as they were not in a focus group. He has them lay down so as to give them the opportunity to feel enough comfortable to remember their first experiences about a topic, an idea or a product. He mentions this final stage as the reptilian hot buttons and as he literally says “the reptilian always wins”.

Summarizing, what he gets with his 3 stage-technique is to recover the first and primal feelings customers had with a product to identify real connections which drive them to purchase it. This is a clear example of what we discussed in the “Kenna’s dilemma” chapter because first impressions not always lead to successful results; in every step marketers take, they have to assure that all issues are covered from their origins.

Concerning the Song’s example, its marketing strategy to appeal its target was very ambitious but not well oriented. What they pursued with its campaign was to create a lifestyle around the brand. In fact, they were able to create it but not the way they had expected. People felt identified with Song’s ads but they didn’t realize the meaning or the company’s purpose. Thus, although trying to be innovative and proactive –as their campaign was well thought and developed- they forgot the most relevant point in any campaign, which is selling the product.

KENNA'S DILEMMA

KENNA’S DILEMMA

How can marketers find how to appeal customers properly? How many issues do they have to take into account to be sure that their performance is the required one to achieve their marketing goals? Reading accurately “Kenna’s Dilemma” chapter, one can observe and detect that even the best marketers can fail if they don’t realize which are their exact unmet needs required to solve the problems they face. All the examples explained in the chapter define the usual mistakes marketers do when they try to analyze customer insights. Thus, this chapter is very useful to learn about others’ mistakes and identify good marketing practices.

Cases such as Coca Cola and Pepsi or E&J and Christian Brothers show the reader that first impression sensations are not always the right ones or the ones which define the whole process of consumption. In the example of Coca Cola and Pepsi, due to the first blind taste tests, where 57% of the tasters preferred Pepsi; Coca Cola invested in R&D to produce the New Coke, which was a little lighter and sweeter than the classic Coca Cola and much more similar to the taste of Pepsi. At that moment, although blind taste tests were favorable to the New Coke, its sales were such a disaster that Coca Cola Company was forced to bring back the original formula as Classic Coke. In the end, the key point was that the amount of Pepsi and Coca Cola in the blind taste tests was much smaller than the real quantity of liquid in regular cans; tests participants appreciated the sweeter taste but when they had to drink an entire bottle, they preferred Coca Cola.

Cases such as the previous example help me identify instructive and helpful lessons for a marketer trying to gain insight from current or potential customers. I would like to highlight two of these lessons; the first one is about ensuring that every marketing step of a research is under control when the final decision must be taken and the second one refers to the fact of assuming that having the best product does not mean a company is going to sell more than its competitors. By assuring that these two lessons are followed strictly, companies will not fail as much as they do in the art of attracting and gaining insight from customers.

To explain the first lesson I would like to address the topic of the water Perrier. When Perrier’s marketing department saw an opportunity to be the first mover in creating a premium niche in the water industry, they realized that the distribution channel they had to use included elite and sophisticated bars, restaurants and pubs. The cost of the bottle was almost 5 € and the packaging was modern and fashionable. Moreover, they made a big effort to be positioned as an innovative and exclusive brand. Unfortunately, Perrier’s sales didn’t have the success expected because, although target customers were willing to pay that amount of money for just one bottle of water, they didn’t have the habit of consumption in the overwhelming majority of places where Perrier was sold.

One of the most common conceptions among entrepreneurs is that their products will have great success just because of their superior quality. The problem is that although this is an important factor, it is not enough because marketing includes a lot of different but relevant issues. Simplifying, marketing mix is defined by 4 P’s (Product, Placement, Price and Promotion) and the previous stages are the definition of the market, the segmentation and the positioning. Therefore, if any one of these features is not considered in detail, all the effort done will not reap benefits.