blog x

In the Wikipedia article on viral marketing, it begins by defining “viral marketing” and explaining a little bit of its background and use. To me, it seemed like viral marketing is how everyone advertises, but upon further reading, I discovered this was not always the case. Sony was one of the first companies to utilize this technique to market the first PlayStation. The three most important parts of viral marketing are messenger, message, and environment. The messenger should receive the message quickly and spread it to a large social hub, but the message itself should be interesting enough. The environment is important because the timing and context of whatever campaign should be relevant to the message. It was really interesting to me to learn about influencers’ roles in viral marketing. It did not surprise me, but it reminded me of many YouTubers or Instagramers that I follow. People like Cody Ko and Alexis Ren make thousands of dollars just be spreading advertisements or promotions to their many followers. The ALS Ice Bucket Challenge was one of the examples given in the article. I think that viral marketing is going to shift over the years because marketing has already shifted so much already. My dad owns a direct mail advertising company, which will probably not be relevant after his generation. Viral marketing is one of the best ways to market nowadays, but in 50 years, I am sure it will have changed immensely.