Individual Research into Viral Adverts.

Individual Research into Viral Advertisements

Viral Advertisements are a form of Viral Marketing. Viral Marketing is a business strategy that uses existing social media networks to promote a product. It refers to how consumers spread information about a product with other people on social networks. The basis is in the spread of information via word of mouth, however modern technology has allowed the viral effect to include many internet-based platforms. Advertisements are usually short clips that are shown to consumers to persuade them to purchase an item or in this case, watch the company's film.

Viral Advertisement are very efficient as they are not time consuming, for example they are very easily produced and released, and consumed by an audience. They are also cost efficient, as businesses don't need a large amount of money to post their Viral Advertisement to social networking platforms. The majority of the consumers are frequent users of social media, meaning that it is efficient as it reaches an extremely large demographic. 

One of the worlds most popular viral advertisements is the Evian Babies. 

Evian's Babies video's holds the Official Guinness World Record for most Viral Ad of all time, gaining almost 13 million views on YouTube. The Advertisement was a 'Live Young' campaign. The Advertisement of the Evian Babies took a different approach, usually Viral Ad's take to television first, however the company first uploaded to YouTube, this was a very efficient decision saving costs on Advertisement, however due to the success the Ad was considered for a Television Ad Campaign.

The Viral Advert included characters of different genders, ages and races, reaching out to a large demographic. This meant that the audience, no matter who they were, could watch the Ad and relate to it, as it showed the men and women dancing in front of a mirror showing themselves as babies, taking them back to their childhood. The Ad included upbeat music which was suited and Humour. In its first ever global campaign, Evian wanted to build on the concept of Youth. Focusing on emotional benefits, Evian built it's 'Live Young' campaign with an aim to strengthen existing brand relationships, drive awareness of Evian around the world in a fun and innovative way, and use digital as the central medium. The Viral Ad promotes Living Young and a sense of community amongst people, explaining why the ad had such a positive impact and why it became the worlds most popular Viral Advertisement.

A film with a popular Viral Advertisement is The Blair Witch Project (1999)

The Blair Witch Project (1999) is considered one of the most successful Viral Advertisements of all time. When the internet was still in it's early stages, the campaign for The Blair Witch Project was aided by the fact that the found footage genre was still mostly untapped, especially when it came to Thriller/Horror films. The campaign for the film was crafted around attempting to make it appear as though the events of the film were not fictional but a true account of a documentary shoot gone wrong. The Ad showed the characters on a personal level making the audience feel as if they are with them. Buzz for the film reached previously unseen levels for a low-budget thriller/horror flick made for less than a million dollars. Adding to the mysterious course of the Viral Advertisement campaign, the three filmmakers remained behind closed doors until The Blair Witch Project box office phenomenon had run its course. 

The Blair Witch Project reeled in over $284 million at box office overall, and $1.5million on just 27 screens on the opening weekend, due to the limited number of screens it created a sense of urgency for the audience to get a ticket, making it a unique selling point. The film was mainly released on college campuses, maintaining a specific target audience. The most compelling aspect of the Viral campaign was the attention to detail, to the extent that if the audience researched the film on IMDB, the characters were listed as 'Missing, presumed dead.' , they even handed out missing flyers/leaflets, this is a technique of marketing. 

Even though The Blair Witch Project wasn't the most successful film according to box office income, the campaign is said to be one of the best Viral Advertisements due to it's minimal budgets and the buzz created by simple things such as websites.