Viral Marketing Case: "Avatarize Yourself" - Part II

Viral marketing is a useful strategic and tactical tool in any promotional model. It is a speedy method of transmitting message via the web. Basically, the duration of a film showed in cinemas is just about few months. How to make the exposure of the film's messages grow exponentially must be the most important aspect for a movie. In this sense, viral marketing is a useful tool for promoting Avatar.

The film Avatar cooperated with McDonald's to create and promote this online application not only because it can reduce the promoting cost, but that can let people likely to be a part of the movie. When the user uploads his/her photo in the web site, it can create his/her sole picture that is different from the others. This individualization leads the users feel interested and then they are willing to send to their friends. Thus, once the viral marketing launched, the viral message does not require any resources input from the originating organization.

This viral marketing campaign not only bring a great box office record for the movie, but that benefits McDonald's for short term revenue and buzz.

Reference: http://www.avatarizeyourself.com/

Source: alvin chan

Definition of Viral Marketing

In Internet and online advertising viral marketing is a type of marketing technique that relies on and encourages people to pass along a marketing message by word-of-mouth (or word-of-e-mail) marketing. Viral marketing online uses blog and social networks to produce positive word-of-mouth brand awareness.

The advantages of viral marketing are low costs, great reach, high credibility, high efficiency and the possibility of continuous campaign adjustments.

The downfalls of viral marketing include the extent of the reach of failed campaigns, the lack of control, risks that the viral message is perceived as spam and the limited possibility for segmentation. One of the things you definitely want to avoid is people being so repulsed at the message (either the words are sick or the images are disgusting) that they do not pass it on, and in fact consider the topic negatively in the wrong way.

source: 09800530S.blogspot.com , webopedia , witiger.com