Piaras Kelly PR - Public Relations in Ireland

I had an article in this weekend’s Sunday Business Post in the Marketing section. As time permits I’m going to submit more articles to the press in the future. This article is about the evolution in viral marketing thanks to Youtube et al. Here’s the article for those of you who don’t read the paper:

Online viral marketing is nothing new. However, the last twelve months has seen it rapidly evolve thanks to advances in technology, but more importantly due to the proliferation of amateur produced content.

Traditionally online viral marketing depended on email for its spread. Thanks to video sharing sites like YouTube (http://www.youtube.com) and Google Video (http://video.google.com) consumers are not only able to tell their friends about viral ads by email or instant messaging, but they can also embed the content in Internet forums or their blogs.

Websites like Bebo and MySpace have highlighted the insatiable demand for shared video content amongst their users. Because of the profile of these users, the difficult to reach 13-25 age bracket, marketers and advertisers are not too far behind. Numerous viral adverts can already be found on both YouTube and Google Video.

However, the focus of marketers and advertisers has shifted due to the increasing trend of consumers creating their own content and sharing it amongst their peers. For example, a 75 second video clip by “bowiechick”, a seventeen-year-old girl, lamenting a break up has been viewed over 750,000 times to date. During the course of the clip, she employed a number of her Logitech webcam’s visual effects, which elicited a huge response from viewers impressed by the technology.

Logitech, the webcam makers, were taken aback by the inadvertent publicity and received a further boost when “bowiechick” posted a follow-up video explaining how she had made the video and showcasing Logitech’s webcam. A freely produced 75 second video clip had achieved what a hefty marketing budget could not, successfully introducing the company’s range of webcams to the teen audience.

Spurred on by this new trend, companies are starting to encourage potential customers to create content by offering branded entertainment content, content creation competitions and user driven product advertising.

Brands wishing to associate themselves with the illusive teenage audience are creating sponsored entertainment content such as extreme sports videos in order to connect with the target audience. Importantly the medium of the Internet allows them to do so at a fraction of the cost of television sponsorship.

Other companies are encouraging consumers to create content by running competitions. For example, Warner Independent Pictures has linked with the social networking website Jumpcut.com to promote their upcoming movie, “A Scanner Darkly”, which features Keanu Reeves and Robert Downey Jr. The movie company provided users with a number of still images and video clips and asked them to create their own trailer for the film. The winner will receive two tickets to the US premiere along with roundtrip airfare and a hotel stay.

Bloggers who were once shunned by organisations are beginning to become embraced. Companies are promoting user driven product advertising by offering their goods to bloggers for review purposes. Popular blog sites like Gizmodo now regularly post video reviews of gadgets on YouTube and Nokia recently gave a number of Nokia N90’s to European bloggers.

Consumer generated content is only in its infancy, a fact which is highlighted by devices like the Nokia N90, which are only coming onto the market now with software preinstalled to enable the uploading and distribution of content such as photos and videos. YouTube has also recently announced a new mobile feature which will see users able to post videos from their mobiles to their account on the website.

Expensive mobile data transfer charges currently stand in the way of widespread adoption of such services, but other operators in the sector such as Google offer different solutions which they hope will spread the viral effect from the online to the offline world. Footage from Google Video is available for download to video iPods or Sony PSPs. As a result consumers can become walking billboards for companies as they find clips on the Internet, download them to their portable deivce and share them with friends and family.

Due to the fact that sites like YouTube receive 25 million hits per day, numerous brands are expanding their online viral marketing efforts. With trust in the media falling and the appeal of marketing messages being willingly spread by friends and family, this is one trend that is catching on in the communications world.

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