Nonprofit Expressions

By Jennifer

Forget the lead paragraph, watch our ‘Elf Yourself’ video. (A Christmas treat from Nonprofit Expressions).

Office Max gives internet consumers the “miraculous ability to turn themselves into elfs,” according to the www.elfyourself.com website. The program lets you upload up to four pictures of your friend’s faces. The result? A hilarious video of your friends, coworkers, boss or family members that you can share with them!

So let’s get to the point: what makes it a viral ad, and why is it so effective?

Wikipedia defines viral marketing and viral advertising as “marketing techniques that use pre-existing social networks to produce increases in brand awareness, through self-replicating viral processes, analogous to the spread of pathological and computer viruses. It can be word-of-mouth delivered or enhanced by the network effects of the Internet. Viral marketing is a marketing phenomenon that facilitates and encourages people to pass along a marketing message voluntarily.”

According to George Silverman in ‘The Secrets of Word of Mouth Marketing,’ a satisfied customer may tell an average of three people about a product/service that they like, but ELEVEN people about a product or service which they didn’t like. In the case of Elf Yourself, however, people may tell 4 ore more people every time they make a video - multiply that by the number of videos each person makes (I made 5 versions for family and friends).

Other well-known viral ad campaigns include the Aqua Teen Hunger Force campaign which caused a bomb scare in Boston. Although this was not an internet campaign, it obviously created a lot of brand awareness. Other types of viral promotions include funny video clips, interactive online games called “advergames” or text messages, for a few examples.

Viral Marketing as Cause Marketing

Let’s think about viral marketing in nonprofit terms. We don’t necessarily have a product or service, but we do have a cause. If a viral ad for a specific cause is self-replicating, that means that a user is feeling connected to a cause or purpose. They start to have a feeling of ownership with the cause. TheNewJew blog talks more about maximizing social networking tools.

For more information contact the author.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 17th, 2007 at 2:01 pm and is filed under Advertising, General, Marketing, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.