Browsing tag

Viral Marketing

The value of shareworthy content: Spotify Wrapped

December 3, 2020

It’s that time of the year. It’s time for Spotify Wrapped :).

See, I told you yesterday, it’s December, the month when we will be bombarded with year-end reflection posts. Some that we will be looking forward to. And some that we wish we hadn’t seen.

Spotify Wrapped is an interesting example of that. Some laugh at it, some love it, and some hate it. But despite the love and hate relationship with it, people share it. And as a product marketer, that’s the most intriguing part of it for me. 

The moment I spotted #2020Wrapped in my Spotify app, I headed to Twitter. And as expected, it has been trending on all social channels. Full of funny memes, as well as happy messages. 

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Word of Mouth: Facilitating vs. Faking it

May 11, 2010

I have recently written a post on Word of Mouth Marketing at pluggd.in

Excerpt from the post: “Word of mouth” marketing is an age old concept now and from bigger organizations to start ups, almost everybody wants to take this free marketing path. While some think that WOM is something which will happen on its own, some go ahead & incentivize their customers to spread the word and then there are some who take extreme steps of contracting paid outsourced help to create positive word of mouth for their brands. Despite this being “known-by-all” concept, how many startups are there who genuinely have been focusing on this free marketing route and targeting the consumers who can be influencers for fresh leads? Read more on “WOMM – The Evergreen Strategy for Free Marketing” at pluggd.in

As far as understating this concept is concerned, Word of Mouth undoubtedly seems to be one of the simplest marketing terms but when it comes to execution, this is one of the trickiest of the lots. See these for e.g.,

  • A popular networking site bombarding by sending emails through dummy user ids with following subject & content:
    • Subject: I’ve never seen anything like this before!
    • Excerpt from the email content: I came across this recently and since then, I’ve met some pretty interesting people and think you must try this out too. This is really good and different, just click this link and be my friend.

Well, frankly speaking one does not care a bit for any new networking site which asks you to join only because you can make friends with interesting people there! At the first look itself this mail looks just so artificial.

  • A newly launched e-commerce site sending the following message in your Facebook account again through dummy user profiles:
    • Hey there! I have been using thisxyz.com and I find it to be pretty good site for all your online book shopping needs. Collection of books there is just so great and you get some amazing discounts too. All you have to do is register and start your shopping now.

I actually landed on this site esp. because it mentioned about a good collection of books and it didn’t take me more than a second to realize that it was just another sham message, an effort by some newbie to spread the positive word without even having the basics in place. Forget the discount, the collection itself was pathetic. Even very popular books were not available and the search as well as browse functionalities were just too hopeless. Yes, the message managed to get me there, but only once. The experience was sad enough to ensure that I don’t go back there again, more so when I’ve multiple other options available.

In an effort of spreading the positive message amongst the crowd, most of the companies actually forget that word of mouth can only be encouraged and not forced; it can only be facilitated and not faked. Owe it to the simplicity (at least the presumed simplicity) of implementation, most marketers just jump on to it without realizing the repercussion of over-doing it or doing it the sham way. Today’s consumers are smart enough to smell the scam and if they do, then such unnatural messages actually backfire and tarnish the image of the brand instead of building it further. Even though the word “marketing” is attached to this term, still word of mouth marketing is not about creating the word on your own, it  is marketing the word created by your consumers; more importantly it is about providing reasons to your consumers (either through your product or service) to speak up and then utilizing this buzz within your marketing framework.

Note: Like my experience with Flipkart, do you have similar experiences with any Indian or International brand where you’ve been so impressed that you’ve created the WOM for it on your own? Would love to hear your anecdotes here.

Offisial Atyachaar from Make My Trip

August 24, 2009

Makemytrip does it again and this time I love it. In fact just saying “love it” once can’t justify my delighted reaction towards the campaign, I mean I seriously loved it esp. the official atyaachar anthem. It’s a riot and simply terrific! It’s one such viral campaign which you definitely feel like promoting on your own. I seriously went ROFL listening to the lyrics of the anthem and the tone in which it has been sung is brilliant.

Makemytrip has launched this online campaign www.offisialatyachaar.com to promote its weekend packages. It’s a movement against work stress, impossible deadlines and long work hours which Make My Trip has presented in a very interesting way. The home page reads: Impossible Deadlines? Graveyard shifts? An atyachaari Boss? Work has taken you for granted for way too long. It’s time to act. It’s time to break away! Join the protest. It has sections as – Offisial Atyachaari, Offisial Atyawear, Offisial Anthem, Offisial Downloads, Offisial Outburst and all of them are just fantastic. You need to navigate through the site on your own to experience the fun. The movement has already instituted its presence on Facebook, now I’m eagerly waiting for its appearance on twitter too. What I liked about this campaign:

  • It’s FUN and brings a big smile on your face.
  • It establishes an immediate connect with the TG.
  • It promotes the product in a very intelligent way; in fact there is very less of branding in this overall campaign but still it creates that impact both from brand as well sales perspective.
  • It’s interactive properties like atyachaari jokes, sicknames for bosses contest, ringtones, wallpapers and my personal favorite – smashing a real office as protest to atyachaar :). I think these are really wild and innovative stuffs.
  • It’s a viral in true sense, you really feel like sending this link to your peers and colleagues.

From concept to execution, I think both EURO RSGC & digiVaasi have done a great job. I’m only wondering why haven’t they started promoting this campaign at least amongst its members? I don’t remember receiving any email or message unlike that Gajodhar campaign which frankly speaking I hadn’t liked much. By chance I went to Make My Trip website today to check some ticket price and glanced upon their banner ad. Hope they start promoting it soon to spread the buzz and till the time they are not, I think I as a fan of this campaign would like to do it through my blog & tweets :), now that’s what I call a true viral, ain’t it?

http://helpbihar.in: Interesting Example of Viral Marketing

September 20, 2008

One of my friends forwarded me the link http://helpbihar.in which is a campaign for helping Bihar Flood Victims. Its an initiative started by www.planindia.org and the conceptualization and design is done by Quasar – an interactive online agency. This site asks you to fill answer for some simple questions and for each correct answer sponsors would donate Torches, Candles, Milk powder, Match Boxes, Chlorine Tablets, Nylon Ropes, Tarpaulin Sheets and Biscuits to Bihar Flood Victims. Sponsors name and logo is mentioned in the right hand side of each question and some of the sponsors observed by me were Godrej, Chevrolet and Cadence. For each correct answer you get to know what you have donated to help the Bihar Flood Victims. The more people answer the questions, the more donations go to flood victims.

Initially I had some doubt on the authenticity of this campaign and hence I directly asked it from one of my business associates who works for Quasar and he confirmed that this is very much a real campaign and the donations are being given by the sponsors to Bihar Flood Victims. The site has this message displayed on top – “The more people play this game, the more help goes to flood victims. So click here to invite your friends. My first reaction as a user after submitting the answers was to send this to all my friends and acquaintances. Me and many of my friends have donated money and clothes to victims as per our means and resources but when I sent this link to them not only did they answer the questions themselves but most of them have forwarded this link to all in their contact list. When I put this link in my status message in all chat engines, almost 50% of my contacts in my list pinged me and asked, “what is this link all about”. A very very effective viral marketing example I must say! This definitely has the power to encourage individuals to pass on this message to others and hence has the potential for exponential growth and influence. And the best part is that it immediately connects to you and sending it to others is very spontaneous and intuitive. I liked this concept a lot and I think Quasar has done a wonderful job as far as conceptualization is concerned. Its really good to see such innovative viral campaigns not only for product promotions but for serious social causes like helping flood victims etc.