After perusing Omar’s “Creating Viral Marketing Campaign” blog entry, I was struck by the question of if and how Viral-marketing overlaps with targeted marketing campaigns. Before starting this class, I assumed these two marketing techniques were mutually exclusive.
Targeted marketing’s assumed purpose was to convey information targeted to the user based on their demographic data, or current and historical needs (like a search results). We talked about this in our first class, but the incredible power of the targeting tools, and the minimal content conveyed through these (predominantly text) ads I didn’t think that the creative and engaging content of a viral campaign was possible.
Before we started this class, I equated viral marketing with raw creativity. I viewed effective advertising in this genre as primarily video campaigns, such as the chicken for burger king (http://www.bk.com/en/us/campaigns/subservient-chicken.html), the naked apartments blog (http://www.nakedapartments.com/blog/creepy-creeper/) and the old spice (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owGykVbfgUE) guy, which became viral hits, I assumed because of their broad appeal, rapid spread and their ability to inspire conversation and become “water cooler stories.”
However, through the first class, I am very surprised to discover that there is a strong science at work behind these marketing techniques, and there is some solid overlap between the two. I would love to hear more from Professor Kagan and our class about the convergence of these two marketing techniques and the ability of targeted campaign to transform into a viral hit.
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