My company, AdTools (http://www.adtoolsinc.com), tripped over viral marketing accidentally in 1997. We made 2 little downloadable animated strippers (all in the best possible taste, of course!) and sent links to them by email as Christmas presents to our clients. The screen that displayed at the end of the animation contained the option to send it to a friend with a personalized greeting. Within a few days, we were unable to cope with the hundreds of thousands of downloads they were getting per day, and we had to take them off our site.

We realised that there was a business in this sort of interest, and created an e-card site: www.messagemates.com, which was in the top 50 websites globally in late 1998, getting nearly 5million visitors in December 1998. This was without any other promotion - not even banner ads. We just sat back and watched the advertising revenue pour in - ah, heady days!

Some of the people who saw our MessageMates e-cards were marketers who recognised the potential of this form of word-of-mouth distribution, and approached us to do something similar for their brands. In 1999 Ogilvy Interactive hired us to do a 'Virtual Pet' version of the Felix catfood character for Nestle/Purina. The beta version of this 'leaked' (someone must have sent it to a friend who sent it to a friend...), and the first we heard about it was a glowing thank-you from someone in an American military base! Since then it has had millions of downloads, and we still handle huge numbers of inquiries about it each month.

Fast forward to 2003 - dot.com crash... advertising slump... enormous profusion of websites and now blogs... How do we sell viral marketing in these tougher times? For one thing, it's considered too hit-and-miss to be popular with battle-hardened marketers with an eye on ROI. Consumers are also more cynical about the marketing they receive, and have become sensitive to feeling manipulated into propagating a marketing message. A marketer would be taking quite a risk to rely on the viral effect alone to get the message out.

Instead, we view the viral effect as an element of the PR & distribution mix for a campaign. It's rare for something to really 'go viral' and reach huge multiples of the initial distribution, but an extra 20-50% is commonplace. When companies are paying good money to acquire or build mailing lists, this sort of uplift is still very valuable.

Chris Pointon
CTO
AdTools
http://www.adtoolsinc.com

I agree with Chris in that the viral effect is part of the greater mix, but it can still be a huge part. Despite the amount of marketing activity, a successful viral campaign can be huge. When we ran the campaign for the Honda Joy Machine (http://www.hondajoymachine.com) we only "seeded" the e-mail to a few hundred Honda family and friends, asking them to pass it on. The content was good and a decent prize was on offer for registrations - within three months we had half a million visitors to the site. (http://www.dowcarter.com/DC/pdf_casestudy/honda_viral.pdf)

The point is, your offer has to be good, funny, original, addictive, imaginative, anything so long as it inspires people to want to share it with friends. If you have that, sky is the limit!

Stephen R O'Brien
DOWCARTER

Chris - could you please get in touch with me ASAP? Roland Dunn thought you might be intersted in an opportunity I would like to discuss with you.
Dorothea Arndt

On 14:51:11 28 July 2003 croesus wrote:
>My company, AdTools (http://www.adtoolsinc.com), tripped
>over viral marketing accidentally in 1997. We made 2
>little downloadable animated strippers (all in the best
>possible taste, of course!) and sent links to them by
>email as Christmas presents to our clients. The screen
>that displayed at the end of the animation contained the
>option to send it to a friend with a personalized
>greeting. Within a few days, we were unable to cope with
>the hundreds of thousands of downloads they were getting
>per day, and we had to take them off our site.
>
>We realised that there was a business in this sort of
>interest, and created an e-card site:
>www.messagemates.com, which was in the top 50 websites
>globally in late 1998, getting nearly 5million visitors in
>December 1998. This was without any other promotion - not
>even banner ads. We just sat back and watched the
>advertising revenue pour in - ah, heady days!
>
>Some of the people who saw our MessageMates e-cards were
>marketers who recognised the potential of this form of
>word-of-mouth distribution, and approached us to do
>something similar for their brands. In 1999 Ogilvy
>Interactive hired us to do a 'Virtual Pet' version of the
>Felix catfood character for Nestle/Purina. The beta
>version of this 'leaked' (someone must have sent it to a
>friend who sent it to a friend...), and the first we heard
>about it was a glowing thank-you from someone in an
>American military base! Since then it has had millions of
>downloads, and we still handle huge numbers of inquiries
>about it each month.
>
>Fast forward to 2003 - dot.com crash... advertising
>slump... enormous profusion of websites and now blogs...
>How do we sell viral marketing in these tougher times? For
>one thing, it's considered too hit-and-miss to be popular
>with battle-hardened marketers with an eye on ROI.
>Consumers are also more cynical about the marketing they
>receive, and have become sensitive to feeling manipulated
>into propagating a marketing message. A marketer would be
>taking quite a risk to rely on the viral effect alone to
>get the message out.
>
>Instead, we view the viral effect as an element of the PR
>& distribution mix for a campaign. It's rare for
>something to really 'go viral' and reach huge multiples of
>the initial distribution, but an extra 20-50% is
>commonplace. When companies are paying good money to
>acquire or build mailing lists, this sort of uplift is
>still very valuable.
>
>Chris Pointon
>CTO
>AdTools
>http://www.adtoolsinc.com