Caracas Daily Journal (Luis M. Garcia A.): From the beginnings of the primal language until the latter development of more direct and complex channels for mankind's expression such as the written press, radio and television, advertising has always been present as a faithful companion, and it has even gone along with the many changes that communications have undergone in history.
It had to be part of the latest technological advances of the decade.
A fine example of this is the birth of Internet and its digital spiderweb that has turned it into one of the most complete vehicles for communication and information in the latest years. It affects not only the way people communicate, but also marketing's methods and sales; thus creating, at the same time, new strategies of communications for the advertising business that were totally unthinkable two decades ago. One of the most used alternatives, within the so-called "new advertising", is the viral marketing.
It takes advantage of the communicational power of Internet's social networks to launch a message like an epidemic via e-mail. That is why it is called viral. In order to achieve its goal, the viral announcements use a specific user as a communications vector of a given message. It will then re-launch itself to other known users and, as a result, it would achieve the brand's recognition in a relatively short time.
Another advantage of this kind of advertising has to do with costs that, when compared to traditional advertising outlets, are substantially more economic for the client, who wants his/her product, brand or service positioned within the targeted market. But, what are the mechanisms used to undertake a successful viral campaign? In order to reach its goal, this type of marketing uses a series of options such as the bothersome chain messages or cockamamie stories which usually take the form of funny video clips, interactive flash, imagery, and even text, that rouse people to propagate the message among other users and send it to people on his or her contact list.
Likewise, the Instant Messaging and the use of mobile phones with Bluetooth technology have turned out to be great resources used by the viral advertising, and this is due to the great acceptance it has among the young public; and it consists on sending hyperlinks through Instant Messaging programs like Jabber, AIM, ICQ, MSN, Yahoo or Google Talk.
Another Internet option frequently used by new marketers is the so called newsletter, which, contrary to viral advertising, it does not need infected users to be disseminated; on the contrary, it makes use of a determined subscribers' pool and of a database to express a series of contents and related news to a group that shares a common interest by frequenting the same Web page.
The end purpose of the newsletter is to keep the subscribers' interests towards a determined page through the information that carries a common and specific interest, thus establishing an exchange of information and a contact as far as promotions, novelties and interesting gadgets among other things that indirectly obligates the reader to visit that page regularly. And the best part is that it is fast and it does not cost much.
Though viral advertising has lots of advantages, that suite most businesses, I am not sure if it is suited to businesses such as banks, for example, that are almost expected to invest in their advertisement and advertise in a more traditional manner.
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