Viral advertising refers to when a product, brand, service (etc.) is publicised via the internet or through word of mouth. The concept is that marketing itself starts off small by making a product known to a small number of individuals. These people then use pre-existing social networks (such as Facebook and Twitter) in order to inform others. This leads to an exponential growth of acknowledgement of said product. It can be used as free publicity as the product can easily 'advertise itself' across social media.
A good example of this is the John Lewis Christmas advert, holding over 20,000,000 views on Youtube by January.
Very efficient- While advertisements on the television or in a newspaper can be longwinded in terms of attracting customer, a viral ad will spread very quickly between people.
Enhanced market- It allows brand awareness to increase exponentially due to people spreading the word with their friends.
Cost effective- Unlike many other forms of advertising, businesses only need a small amount of input for a viral ad, in that it will mostly distribute itself. This means that this form of advertising is much cheaper, whilst still reaching a mass demograophic.
In what ways can a film be virally advertised?
Upcoming films being virally advertised is becoming more and more popular. A 'buzz' is created on social media maily for audiences purposes. You are able to create Facebook, Twitter and Instagram pages (etc.) in order to advertise your film to a large audience.
Example- An example of an independent film that has been virally advertised is 'Four Lions'. This is simply because the film had a budget of £2.5 million, therfore relied on viral marketing to promote the film. The contoversial nature of the film gained fame over social media, working in the films advantage.
The Dark Night (2008) also had a creative marketing campaign. The campaign itself is famous and well known for being ambitious and creating an internet sensation and a wider demographic for the film. This film however did too create the more traditional marketing schemes such as posters and trailers.
What happened in the marketing campaign?
In 2007, Warner Bros initiated the viral marketing campaign by setting up a 'fake' newspaper named 'The Gotham Times'. An interactive document online designed to seem realistic. In other places such as Chicago, the paper was given out as hard compies, which helped to promote the film through word of mouth also. This campaign utilised the films iconic tagline 'why so serious?'. This then began to interest fans by having them learn what they want to see, emails started to be sent by fans, slowly removinf the pixels and revealing the first official image of this incarnation of the Joker.
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