Bootsmann&Tornado

Christian Wilfer of DSG – The Viral Company – spoke about Viral Marketing at an OMD workshop:
“How can companies make use of the cross-linked conversations of the buying public.”

He mentioned five points in his presentation which I am going to highlight here:

1. Create products people speak about. Quality is a prerequisite.
2. Create added values to your product.
   1. Weber nation, for example, has a community which Weber grill owners can join and set up appointments to arrange a barbecue together or just to discuss about their products, recipes etc.
3. Become entertainment.
   1. Twix.com is a good example. On the website you can create your own story by simply clicking on the given options (“Be shallow” or “Be deep”) which appear while the actor is eating a Twix (even I am getting hungry now and want a Twix) and therefore the user can interact and influence how the love story ends
4. Make consumers part of your marketing.
   1. Whopperfreakout.com is a good way to show how consumers are being made part of a campaign. When you go to the website the first question which appears is:
      “What would happen if we took the Whopper off the menu?”
      Curious? Just take a look at this:

5. Viral Clip Advertising (Obi)
   1. In the end Christian Wilfer gave an example of one of their own viral marketing campaigns:
      “Obi. Simply knocking the nail in the wood with three hammers.”
      

Whether or not you make use of these five steps is up to you. They are generalized and not too specific but sometimes even the simplest things can help and make you think of other opportunities.

Furthermore Mr. Wilfer gave some literature references for those who are interested in reading:

• The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcom Gladwell
  “The best way to understand the dramatic transformation of unknown books into bestsellers, or the rise of teenage smoking, or the phenomena of word of mouth or any number of the other mysterious changes that mark everyday life,” writes Malcolm Gladwell, “is to think of them as epidemics.”
• The Cluetrain Manifesto: The End of Business as Usual by by Christopher Locke (Author), Rick Levine (Author), Doc Searls (Author), David Weinberger (Author)
  “They proclaim that, thanks to conversations taking place on Web sites and message boards, and in e-mail and chat rooms, employees and customers alike have found voices that undermine the traditional command-and-control hierarchy that organizes most corporate marketing groups.”

At the end I would like to give you another funny and interesting example of how to react to viral marketing effects. The Tiger Woods EA game 2008 had a little mistake which a user noticed really fast and published it on youtube:

Instead of improving the game and announcing to have made a mistake EA games reacted like this:

I would say…clever guys! New way of reacting to messages spread across youtube. Or does someone else have other examples? I am looking forward to it.