Viral and buzz marketing

Imagine achieving so much more for so much less! Click here for free tools and know-how materials from the Mud Valley™ strategy & brand marketing community.

Question - What is the difference between viral and buzz marketing?

Answer - Viral and buzz marketing are both about leveraging social networking in order to promote your products and services. There is only a hair breadth’s difference between them which is that viral marketing suggests leveraging buzz marketing by introducing a ‘virus’ – something that social networkers will want to pass on, such as a video or an MP3 or even an electronic ‘gift’ as you would find on FaceBook.

Key points

The theory of six degrees of separation argues that at between five and seven removes you know everybody in the world – you know somebody, who knows somebody, who knows somebody etc..

There has been much speculation as to whether this theory is accurate, however if you have joined Linked-in you will know that from having 50 direct contacts, you could well have 300,000 at two further removes.

Microsoft have recently gone one further by mapping instant messaging traffic to pin it down to just less than seven (6.6 on average) degrees to reach everybody.

Viral and buzz marketing techniques are based on this theory to form an alternative PR proposition. Rather than targeting authoritative figures in the established media, why not tap into people who know lots of other people and love talking to them? They are going to have to talk about something, so why not about you, and maybe even to pass on a virus while they are at it?

In more detail ….

Malcolm Gladwell was one of the people who popularised the six degrees of freedom theory in his book ‘The Tipping Point’, showing that, for instance, the re-emergence of Hush Puppies as a fashion item worldwide was down to the influence of only a handful of busy networkers based in New York’s SoHo district. He equally reported that instances of thousands of case of STDs sexual transmitted diseases could be traced back to three or four people.

Arguably, the six degrees of freedom is the most influential commercial theory in recent history, being the basis for all the social network sites and being responsible for a range of gadgets and functionalities installed throughout the Internet.

Many, however, would argue that social networking was a key commercial idea long before the Internet was set up. Networking devices (e.g. the Round Table, the Rotary, the Freemasons, the local church etc.) have been around a long time and MLM multi-level marketing is also based on the same principle – Tupperware parties, Avon Ladies, Amway and all.

One way of kicking off a buzz / viral activity is to hold an experiential marketing event. Get some well-connected people together, give them a good time and set them talking.

Another increasingly common method is to tap bloggers.

A third is to develop a ‘virus’ – some sort of gadget people can pass on – such as a video up on YouTube or similar, a free MP3 or PodCast download, or a ‘gift’ freely available all over FaceBook. These viruses generally do not have to be produced to professional standards; they just have to be catchy – something funny, outrageous, or bizarre, and preferably relatively short, attention span on the Internet being as it is. Many sites such as YouTube and Digg log how many people have viewed a specific item (many other people offer services to artificially boost views, presumably using an adapted ‘denial of service’ technology). At the time of writing a 1:59 minute camcorder video of a conversation between a father and his son who has just been to the dentist has garnered 21,256,072 views promoting “Is this real life? t-shirts”!

We can help you in two ways - we have a mass of smart strategic brand marketing tools, processes and workshop techniques for you to use, and a mass of smart brand marketing agencies as members across the world with niche knowledge and experience to support you thereafter.

Click here for free tools and know-how materials from the Mud Valley™ strategy & brand marketing.

© 2000-2009, Mud Valley ™ brand marketing community.

Related answers