Its gone viral!

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Social networking and blogging sites have become a new platform for companies to advertise and market their services, products, these platforms allow the organisation to reach an audience far greater than conventional media. What is “going viral”, well it is something that is spread across the internet, normally due to the media evoking emotion in a person with them then sharing it to others. By going viral many people must undergo this process. There is no formula for something to go viral however their are corresponding factors in many that have gone viral, if an organisation can hit these general guidelines and have some luck they can create an ad that can go viral thus projecting their brand, identity and message to a vast audience. To explain how big this audience could be here are some statistics;

  • 1.28 billion active users monthly Facebook.
  •  255 million monthly users twitter.
  • 1 Billion average YouTube mobile videos views per day.
  • 77% of internet users read blogs.

An example of a successful viral advert is Dove real beauty sketches video, since appearing on YouTube they have received over 63 million views, and this is just on YouTube from the first post, it also received 4.3 billion PR impressions in less than a month. However does this increase sales which is the main objective at the end of the day, IRI data show Dove’s U.S. sales up 1% in four weeks, after the video was released and a 3% rise to $1.5 billion for the full year.

To have a successful impact upon sales and the identity of the organisation the media that has gone viral must be positive about the brand and for the media to go viral it must have some aspect of luck and the foundations of a normal viral media, so in a way unless these combinations have been achieved it cant be considered a successful viral marketing campaign, however if these have been achieved then there is obvious rewards that are beneficial.

Ajmera, H., 2014. Social Media 2014 Statistics – an interactive Infographic you’ve been waiting for!. [online] Digital Insights. Available from: http://blog.digitalinsights.in/social-media-users-2014-stats-numbers/05205287.html

 Digitalstrategyconsulting.com, 2014. Viral video marketing case studies – the best virals of 2013 – Digital Intelligence daily digital marketing research. [online] Available from: http://www.digitalstrategyconsulting.com/intelligence/2013/12/viral_video_marketing_case_studies_the_best_virals_of_2013.php

Neff, J., 2013. Dove: The Evolution From ‘Evolution’. [online] Adage.com. Available from: http://adage.com/article/news/dove-evolution-evolution/241971/

Moreau, E., 2014. What Does It Mean to Go Viral Online?. [online] About. Available from: http://webtrends.about.com/od/howtoguides/a/Viral-Online.htm

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