what is a viral marketing campaign

[pagey3]

you always hear people talk about them but what exactly does it mean?

[Lillabet]

It is a marketing campaign where the advertisement is passed along from person to person - usually electronically.

The classic example is the email site hotmail. When the company started every message that someone sent had an advert for the service at the bottom of the message, inviting the message recipient to click through and sign up.The company grew from around 0 to around 12 million users in about 18 months.

As the advert is contained on something passed on from someone you know and trust there is an implied endorsement of the product - after all, they're using it....so it must be ok

I think it is named because the advert spreads like a virus - one person catches it and then passes it on to everyone that they come into contact with.

[samfarley]

I Study Media, and more specifically Advertising, and i can tell you that the previous posted answer is not correct. Viral marketing is basically word of mouth. Companys use word of mouth to pass on their message, although people do not know they are doing it. Red Bull really used Viral marketing well when the company started. Cigarette companies also use this, as by law they are not permitted to advertise through normal means. One technique they used was Guerilla marketing, one company (unnamed) put unopened packets of cigerettes on tables in pubs. People sat at the tables then found the packets and smoked them, they offered them around, and would have discussed the incident the next day at work, for example, and then the Guerilla campaign turned Viral.

[Lillabet]

I stand by my answer but should not have used the word 'usually' in my first paragraph. Instead I should have used often. It is marketing passed along from person to person as I initially said. If you were to google viral marketing and hotmail you would find it used as a common example in many business studies / media pages.