It can prove extremely difficult for companies to create ‘viral marketing’ campaigns. Viral marketing can create buzz for a brand, increase engagement and involvement with consumers and of course improve dissemination. Although there are various action plans available, it ultimately depends on the consumers’ desire to associate themselves with the content and encourage others to watch that will determine if the media will go viral. If no one engages with the content in terms of likes, comments and shares, it won’t reach a wide audience and will instead fade into the abyss of content floating around the web. The ultimate goal for companies who want to create viral content is to increase sales, or in the least increase the brand’s positive image in order to be subconsciously linked to favourable attributes in the consumers subconscious, increasing the likelihood of customer loyalty. An example of this particularly positive viral situation is Always’ Like A Girl Campaign, linked below, which shares a positive message to women around the world in breaking society’s limitations of girls because of their gender and encouraging them to be themselves regardless. Although no social offers or invitations were implemented as the active components to the viral marketing landscape, user-generated notifications were utilised to allow maximum exposure and reach to consumers wanting to share the positive message. The original video linked below received over 65 million views with little negative responses (Always, 2014), which has damaged other companies attempting to send a positive message in advertising in the past like Chipotle.
Chipotle, a popular world-wide Mexican restaurant chain, released a narrative marketing campaign in 2013 of a scarecrow video game they created in a short film advertisement, linked below. They received an abundance of praise and success from the campaign, with over 5 million views in its first week and increasing sales every quarter thereafter. However, a lot of backlash came along with their success, including claims that their advertisement explicitly advertised for a vegetarian diet with the scarecrow representing the brand in the film only cutting vegetables to sell at his market, whereas Chipotle is a primarily meat-based brand (Weiss, 2013). Another issue was a vastly popular video parody released shortly after Chipotle’s advertisement debut, which depicted the same scenes from the advertisement and the same song, but with a different singer describing Chipotle as a large chain attempting to trick consumers into associating their brand with small family and ethical business with this emotional ad, when in reality, they only care about their own profit (Weiss, 2013). This parody video was greatly shared on social media with over 350,000 views on Funny or Die.
http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/da66b8f1aa/honest-scarecrow
It’s very interesting that although these two advertisements from two extremely different companies are both attempting to share user-generated notification focused content with a positive message, and even if both brands’ main goal is to increase sales, it’s up to consumers whether they find the content genuine and inspirational or whether it should be criticised for being hypocritical and unauthentic.
Always (2014). Always #LikeAGirl. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjJQBjWYDTs&t=4s [Accessed 2 Dec. 2017].
Weiss, E. (2013). What Does “The Scarecrow” Tell Us About Chipotle?. [online] The New Yorker. Available at: https://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/what-does-the-scarecrow-tell-us-about-chipotle [Accessed 2 Dec. 2017].
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