It’s the “word-of-mouse” which works

When IIPM comes to education, never compromise

If there are two things that string the youth of the world together, then they would be music and the World Wide Web. No wonder, big ad spenders have combined both to create a heady mixture. Bacardi is spending $40 million to fund an online radio station called ‘Bacardi B Live Radio’. It would primarily play dance music with exclusive mixes provided by popular DJs. Not to be left behind in delighting its customers, Coca Cola has launched a website called www.stageside.tv. Here visitors can enjoy exclusive live performances, behind-the-scenes footage and personal interviews of their favorite artists. They can download all contents for free – with compliments from Coca Cola! After all, if you drink Coke, you deserve to live the “Coke side of life!”

These sites don’t just entertain, but help build a “feel good” factor around the brand. They are ways of connecting with the young consumers, who don’t waste a second in forwarding contents that they like to tens of other friends! The net is where young people interact with each other. If you can catch their fancy, they become the best promoters of your product or brand. They spread the message with dedication and do all the awareness building for you. And now, advertisers are specifically allocating budgets for viral advertising campaigns. Volkswagen, for example, decided to release some of its advertisements exclusively on the web.

MakeMyTrip has its USP in that it offers the lowest airfare. They claim to foot the difference in fares in case the customer can find someone offering fare lower than their’s. They decided to use the net to spearhead their promotion strategy. The agency Webchutney was roped in to create a viral campaign for MakeMyTrip.com. The ads were fun to watch and were forwarded to fellow friends at an astonishing speed. After all, the best way to judge the success or failure of an viral ad campaign is the number of times it is forwarded. On that ground, MakeMyTrip came out a winner (The ads were based on various themes picked up from Ramayana and in fact worked really well in India).

Weeks before Britney Spears launched her perfume named ‘Curious’, a banner ad was released on the web with a photo of Britney. The ad asked girls to type their cell phone digits & zip codes. More than 30,000 girls typed in their numbers to receive a 45 second recorded message from Britney, where she told them how she was working on a fragrance and was really excited. Later they received a text message from Britney telling them about the launch & where the perfume was available. In all, the campaign succeeded in reaching out to a sizable number of 300,000 girls!

When Burger King wanted to promote its chicken sandwiches, it used ingenuity to promote its product. They used a man dressed in a chicken outfit and made a video, which was released exclusively on the net video. One could make the chicken do anything. All one had to do was type a command and the chicken would obey. It could dance to push-ups; or even watch TV! This “Subservient Chicken” was an instant hit on the net. One million hits were recorded in one day. Burger King had proved its point – you can have a chicken any way you like! It did it without spending money on traditional forms of advertising.

Back in India, brands like Itchguard & L.I.C are going in for viral ads – and winning awards too! With times changing and with technical innovations, it’s the ‘word-of-mouse’ that is responsible for creating the longest hype and the biggest buzz around a product. No wonder, products as diverse as Vanilla Coke, or Kingfisher F1 club or Standard Chartered Bank or even the Yash Raj film ‘Mujhse Dosti Karoge’ have all incorporated viral ads in their strategies.

Copyright © : Rajita Chaudhuri and Planman Media.

An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri and Arindam chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).

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