Surrogate Advertising : Marketing Through Disguise

What is Surrogate Marketing?

Surrogate is a word that means "substitute," and surrogate marketing does exactly that by using a product's brand image to promote another product from the same brand.

These businesses go out of their way to develop innovative strategies to attract as much attention from consumers as possible and to communicate effectively in order to sell a product, service, or idea that they would not be able to sell otherwise.

How and why this originated?

It all started in the United Kingdom. Protests by housewives result in a prohibition on the promotion of alcoholic beverages. They objected to the fact that seeing liquor advertisements makes their husbands more inclined to consume it. The main concern was the impact of such advertisements on the health of consumers. As a result, products such as liquor, tobacco, and cigarettes were eventually prohibited. The ban only applies to the marketing of such products, not their production or sale. Marketers wanted to increase sales, so they began selling such products under the name of other items.

Why is marketing "banned" on these products?

The short answer is that these products are harmful to your health and well-being. They are harmful to humans, causing cancer, heart disease, lung disease, and stroke when consumed. As a result, increasing the promotion of such products is not considered an ethical marketing practice because its consumers may suffer from serious health problems or even die as a result. Despite the restrictions, the products are in high demand in the market because consumers are addicted to them, and thus there is no prohibition on their consumption.

Why Do Companies Use Surrogate Advertising?

Surrogate advertising has recently gained popularity and is increasingly being utilized as a marketing tactic to covertly advertise prohibited goods. To communicate the true product to the target audience, it essentially uses a substitute product.

Following is a list of the top 5 reasons why businesses employ surrogate advertising to market their goods:

1. To get around a restriction on direct product marketing,

2. To keep brands fresh in consumers' eye

3. To promote the brand's image of social responsibility

4. To promote less mainstream goods via ancillary brands or goods

5. To promote goods that generate significant amounts of revenue, such as alcohol, cigarettes, and tobacco.

Pros:

1. It enables businesses to profit from things that are illegal.

2. It implicitly constantly alerting customers about the things that are prohibited.

3. The prospect of competition from new players is reduced if nobody can promote.

Cons:

1. It can defeat the government's prohibition against advertising dangerous products.

2. There is extremely little information and awareness of surrogate marketing.

3. It may have a detrimental effect on society by endorsing harmful products.

DIFFERENT STRATEGIES

Marketing a product indirectly is known as surrogate marketing, and it is not easy. Brands use a variety of techniques to do this, some of which are as follows:

1. Promotion By Extension - Brand extension is the promotion of new items using a well-known brand name. Several corporations nowadays use brand extension in response to a ban on advertising a certain product category. For example, Kingfisher has marketed everything from soda to calendars to airlines under the same brand.

2. Promotion By Association - Promotion through association focuses on a company's marketing strategy and generates the impression in the minds of buyers that the brand is for courageous people. In general, celebrities endorse such companies to assist reflect the ideals that a brand aims to convey. For example, renowned Bollywood actor Shatrugan Sinha appeared in a Bagpiper club soda advertisement to promote the brand.

3. Promotion Through TV Commercials - Many businesses produce TV ads nowadays, although the majority of them directly promote a product. However, in the case of specific items, such as alcohol and cigarettes, firms may be prohibited from doing so. As a result, they make advertising that masquerade an item as something other than the brand's standard offering. That is, they adopt surrogate television advertising. A corporation known for producing alcohol, for example, may create a commercial promoting a new soda.

4. Promotion Through Events And Sponsorships - Events and sponsorships are another kind of surrogate advertising. The corporation leaves its logo someplace, such as on an event wall or the outside boundary of a sporting event, in this sort of advertising. This strategy, in turn, imprints the brand's image on the brains of customers.Royal Stag, for example, owned an IPL franchise and supported Coke Studio performances to promote their brand.

5. Promotion Through Public Service Announcement - Public service announcements (PSAs) are a popular method of advertising items. Most items on the market today are prohibited by surrogate advertising rules and are related with a variety of health dangers. As a result, firms may raise awareness about the dangers of smoking by using colourful brand emblems in their advertising. For example, a firm can raise awareness about the dangers of smoking while also attracting customers by drawing attention to its brand.

Different industries

Surrogate Advertising In Liquor Industry - Today's liquor industry deliberately blurs the line between products by advertising "old wine" in a "new bottle." In other words, companies offer alcoholic beverages disguised as soda, fruit juice, and cocktail mixers. Imperial Blue's series of adverts on music CDs to promote their whisky brand in India, where advertising an alcoholic product is prohibited, is an example of this. This category includes well-known brands such as Bagpiper soda, cassettes and CDs, Royal Challenge, and Kingfisher.

Surrogate Advertising In Tobacco Industry - Many firms have softly targeted customers in recent years by marketing tobacco-based goods disguised as pan masala and hookah replacements. For example, Pierce Brosnan, the renowned actor who played James Bond's character, sponsored Pan Bahar, a pan masala brand, by becoming its brand ambassador. This category includes well-known brands such as Manikchand Group, Dharampal Satyapal Limited, and Kothari Products Limited.

Surrogate Advertising In Cannabis Industry - Cannabis marketing is evolving at a rapid pace. Most marijuana companies market their weed-infused products as medicines. This category includes well-known brands such as ArcView and GW Pharmaceuticals.

 

Ethical Issues and regulations regarding Surrogate Marketing

Surrogate advertising is not ethically correct and it should not be allowed. It is advertising for a brand whose advertising is legally not allowed and another brand is created to get around the law and that brand is advertised to keep the brand in the public mind.Three layers of law, none works -
Industry experts point out that India has a triple layer prohibition:

1) Cable Television Networks (Regulation) Act,1995

2) Cigarettes And Other Tobacco Products (Prohibition Of Advertisement And Regulation Of Trade And Commerce, Production, Supply And Distribution) Act, 2003.

3) ASCI code.

All prohibit "Tobacco and liquor products'' ads by both direct and indirect means. None of the three works though.

Should surrogate marketing be allowed?

The company can not just promote new products (CD’s , mineral water), but at the same time also attach the original brand. Surrogate advertising should not be allowed. Tobacco and liquor banners make use of this phenomenon extensively and try to lure the public. The whole point of banning the product was not the banner but the harm it causes to public and viewers. Hence placing it under the same banner for a different product makes no sense. The banners should concentrate more on the consequences of the products (like tobacco etc) rather than promoting them for a different product.

Is this the end of Surrogate Marketing?

Since advertising has been banned in Mass Media, tobacco and liquor companies have resorted to surrogate advertising tactics to keep their brands alive in the minds of consumers. The tobacco and liquor lobbies are too strong in India. They are the ones which fund political parties. Hence, they get away despite flouting the norms openly. Now, they are the sponsors of the Indian Premier League (IPL) as well. Therefore it is a difficult task to end the use of surrogate marketing techniques by these big players. Surrogate marketing can't be tackled for the good unless the compliance of law is looked upon properly thus there is no expected end to surrogate marketing in the near future.

Metaverse Marketing: Beyond The Universe

WHAT IS METAVERSE?

The word "Metaverse" was made up of the prefix "meta" (beyond) and the "verse" (from "universe"). The term "metaverse" was coined by Neal Stephenson in his science fiction novel Snow Crash, published in 1992. Essentially the metaverse is a parallel world. It consists of multiple interoperable online spaces where people as digital avatars can shop, trade, socialize and interact with one another. The goal is to offer a hyper-real alternative world for the one that you currently live in. While its actualization can take a few years, you can already see aspects of it in online game universes like Fortnite, Roblox, Minecraft etc. Virtual reality, augmented reality, Blockchain and Artificial Intelligence are the technologies that are used in the metaverse.

 

HOW WILL THE LIFE IN METAVERSE BE LIKE?

Metaverse has the potential to transform livelihoods and businesses. The metaverse will without doubt change our society. In metaverse the people will be given different avatars and they can do all what can be done like in the real world.
Picture this: you put on a pair of glasses, and you’re transported to a sprawling golf course. You play a few rounds before your first meeting. You can attend the concert that’s happening 6,000 km away. All of this, and you haven’t ventured outside of your home. This is possible with the help of metaverse.  
Potentially, it has the power to bring us closer together. The metaverse is also likely to have a positive effect on sustainability. Physical goods are increasingly becoming virtualised. Fashion and art are also presented on a virtual stage. In addition, NFTs give creators the opportunity to earn money in the metaverse. It is also said that NFTs will do the same work in the metaverse that cash is doing in the real world. The life in metaverse will completely change the human attributes.

 

CAN YOU ADVERTISE METAVERSE?

Once every decade or so, something new comes to transform the marketing industry. The metaverse dubbed the "next development of the internet," has come now. But, before we discuss the metaverse's function in marketing, it's important to understand how the metaverse was marketed in the first place. The craze was fostered by pandemic-driven virtualization of life and technological breakthroughs. The metaverse has also received widespread attention in recent months as a result of the NFT boom and an endorsement from Facebook's CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who changed his company's name from Facebook to Meta and embarked on a journey to transform his company from a social media one to a metaverse one. He predicted that one billion people will be on the Metaverse in the next decade. And now, when a well-known personality speaks about something, the topic receives a lot of attention and caters to a wider audience, which ultimately helped in the marketing of the metaverse. Influencers also played a significant role in advertising the metaverse, some of them are listed below.

OPPORTUNITIES FOR AN EXPERIENCED MARKETING AGENCY IN THE METAVERSE SEGMENT

Some aspects of traditional marketing may find their way into the metaverse, but there will also be entirely new dynamics in which the user experience will be imperative. For marketing agencies, metaverse will craft channels that will benefit their businesses. This channel- crafting will allow agencies to be more productive and creative at the same time. Also, focusing on some key characteristics such as making it accessible to everyone without any restrictions, and synchronization with the real world. With time, marketing agencies will launch platforms for a wide range of viewer subscriptions, and it is quite evident that people are paying serious money for virtual possessions, from virtual real estate to in-game accessories. Users crave experiences, so everything created by marketplaces, individual collectors, or artists, is necessary. As a result, brands can use the metaverse to create virtual venues, worlds, and spaces to hold events and experiences. Finally, as the metaverse evolves, brands will be forced to reconsider their products, services and marketing strategies.

 

INDUSTRY ALREADY USING METAVERSE GAINS THE FIRST MOVER ADVANTAGE

A first mover is a company that gains a competitive advantage by being the first to bring a new product or service to the market and they typically establish strong brand recognition and customer loyalty. If your first moves are thoughtful and well done, you’re able to raise the expectations that your consumers have of you. Also being first means you get to have more PR, make more ‘ownable’ moments, work out the kinks before everyone else tries it, get top partnerships locked-in and figure out the effects on your wider experience outside of the metaverse
Luxury brands have been the first to tap into this new opportunity. Gucci has released digital collections of its signature clothes and goods in Roblox, with avatar creator Zepeto, and Giphy. The brand has also integrated the SDK (Software Development Kit) of avatar creator Genies directly into its app so customers can dress their avatar while purchasing their own physical clothes. Gucci is one of several brands offering to cloth avatars in designer gear. 

IMPACT OF METAVERSE ON MARKETING SECTOR

· Branded Characters or Real Estate in Games- Several brands have recreated their services or built branded characters or arenas within games, natively inserting themselves within an experience rather than interrupting it. Two games in particular, Animal Crossing: New Horizons and Fortnite, have become fertile ground for brand insertions. Some have opted to replicate their real-world offering in the virtual environment. In the early months of the pandemic, Sentosa Development Corporation recreated Sentosa Island in Animal Crossing, inviting players to visit its attractions and do some virtual yoga while cooped up at home. In the same game, food delivery service Deliveroo last year sent a fleet of virtual riders to deliver virtual treats to players, which it paired with promo codes to order food in the real-world.

     
There are brands that have chosen a stunt-based approach. Fast-food chain Wendy's sent a character resembling the brand's mascot into Fortnite to 'kill' all the freezers in the game's Food Fight mode, after noticing that the Durr Burger restaurant in the game stored its virtual beef in freezers. The brand saw this as an opportunity to advertise its "fresh, never frozen beef"- a stunt which grew social media mentions of the brand by 119% and picked up several awards.

· Digital Goods for Avatars - Avatars, a virtual embodiment of our physical selves that have been around as long as the internet, are viewed as the "first mega opportunity" for brands due to the seemingly endless opportunities to cloths, style and feed them. Almost every product that is marketed to humans can be sold to their virtual counterparts.

These are the several things indicating how fast the digital marketing is being reshaped after the introduction of metaverse.

 

HOW METAVERSE CAN REVOLUTIONIZE JOBS IN THE FIELD OF MARKETING

Metaverse will revolutionize jobs in the field of marketing in a very broad way in coming years. This technology has expanded into more general use where employees working in industries such as retail, logistics, and customer service are practicing with VR headsets. In less than 10-years, VR will be used in 23 million jobs worldwide thus, humanity’s entrance into the Metaverse. Metaverse style ideas might help people organize the way we work and more broadly society, in a more productive manner. In fact, soldiers, surgeons, and astronauts have trained for decades using VR

 

CAREERS IN METAVERSE

• Metaverse Planner - Once we have a working Metaverse, the ability to plan and implement all matters of functionalities into a fully virtual world will be absolutely key to most companies as it will help them in their exponential growth and will select the right things to do within this expanding digital world. To become a Metaverse Planner, person should have years of management experience, knowledge of integrated hardware, software system, platform as a service/software as a service marketing and business models and a great entrepreneurial mindset.
• Metaverse Research Scientist - The job of Metaverse Research Scientist won’t simply entail developing a few basic digital models of the real world within which corporations will be able to bring customers and partners. Metaverse Research Scientists will need to build is something relating to the theory of everything, wherein the entire world is visible and actionable digitally.
• Metaverse Safety Manager - Everyone wants their data to be safe and this is what people will expect from metaverse too so metaverse safety manager will be the most important job profile and they will need people who can provide guidance and oversight for all this during design, validation, and mass production stages, making sure our digital world is safe and meets or exceeds applicable regulatory safety requirements and a person can apply for safety manager post if he/she has an Engineering degree and consumer electronics/manufacturing experience.
• Metaverse Hardware Builder - A hardware builder will assemble all this complex hardware and help the world adapt to it. Knowledge in consumer electronics will be needed to enter and succeed in this career.

 

EXAMPLES OF METAVERSE

Applications

1. Snapchat - Snapchat released an Avatar lens AR filter today, which makes you look like a Sims character. Or, in more modern parlance, it makes you look like what you’d look like in the metaverse.
2. LOKA -. Loka is a Metaverse Multiplayer Gaming App based on real locations, populated by real players & experiences powered by hundreds of 3rd Party Apps. Loka is built on the pillars of Social Engagement, Gaming, E-commerce, Content & Entertainment.
3. Forma Closet - Forma Closet helps customers cultivate a more thoughtful capsule wardrobe, embrace technologies like AI to match customers to garments that suit their style.

Companies

1. GUCCI - Gucci is inching its way into making its own stake on the metaverse, launching an “experimental online space” with NFTs to match, of course. The space is called Vault, which the brand describes as an “online concept store.” Named to evoke “an air of magic,” its very existence serves as a “testament” that “past, present and future can co-exist through the power of the imagination.”
2. Nike - Nike has filed seven trademark applications as it prepares to enter the metaverse. As part of the application, the company indicated its intent to make and sell virtual branded sneakers and apparel.
3. Balenciaga - is rolling out a virtual division of its own, the latest in a string of metaverse-focused moves, including Diesel and Margiela. It is launching a new business unit “dedicated entirely to the development of products, projects and experiences” designed for the metaverse.

 

CONCLUSION

So the future is finally close to being the present and the possibilities are endless. One thing is for sure marketing would never be the same in the coming years.

Decoding “NOW OR NEVER” Marketing

INTRODUCTION

An advertising campaign will not be effective if delivered at the wrong time, no matter how visually appealing, nerve-wracking and groundbreaking it is. In order to create an impact, one has to wait for the right moment. And this is where the role of Moment Marketing jumps in. 

Recent times are filled with memorable events and brands are using moment marketing now more than ever. The reason for that is quite simple - brands want to be a part of consumer conversations so they make use of these trends to catch the attention and to stay on top of their minds.

 

ADVANTAGES OF MOMENT MARKETING

1. COST EFFICIENT: A marketing campaign is effective only when it reaches the right people at the right time but that is not the case with moment marketing campaigns. It is more about seizing (or even creating) the moment and making the most of it. For this, brands do not need to break the bank and splurge on whooping advertising costs. Only a team that remains on the top of their game when it comes to trends and knows their ways around the audience is needed.

 

2. BECOMING THE TALK OF THE TOWN: The way a brand expresses their opinion about a trend connects with their audience and communicates their brand value. If the content comes out well and the message is communicated nicely, the brand will soon become a sensation and its engagement will increase. People have a short attention span, which can be a real challenge for people to engage with a brand. In order to overcome this hurdle, moment marketing is the best.

 

3. 3CS: CONNECTION, CONVERSATION AND CONVERSION: Moment marketing provides a great platform to strike a conversation as well as create a real-time connection with your consumers, as the latter is searching or reading about a particular event or news at the time. It further increases the chances of a brand being discovered by consumers, besides creating a high recall. Also, it creates an organic relationship with your followers, who are more likely to convert into a purchaser of goods or services on their terms.

 

KEY ELEMENTS FOR THE SUCCESS OF MOMENT MARKETING

 

1. KEEP AN EYE OUT FOR TRENDS: By identifying the audience and also the trends, you should capture their interest and also can insert your brand into audience conversations. If you don’t notice a connection between your brand and whatever the latest trend is, it pays to dig deeper and try to add your brand’s spin on the latest conversations. 

 

2. MAKE HUMOUR CENTRAL TO YOUR COMMUNICATION: When it comes to crafting creative moment marketing for brands you handle, remember to be funny and don’t be offensive. For example, Even though Zomato shares topical content, by adding references to food, hunger etc., it keeps the conversation within the realm of their brand’s goals. 

3. POP CULTURE ALL THE WAY: Make sure that your copy and also the design includes pop culture elements. This helps build an inherent virality factor to your topical posts and also helps in successful marketing. A brand can also create posts with an inside joke by keeping in mind the brand ethos and subtly building affinity within your target audience. For example, HDFC Bank.

4. STAY TRUE TO YOUR BRAND WITHOUT BEING PUSHY: To make sure your efforts don’t fall into vain, keep your brand’s core values at the topmost priority of all your moment marketing activities. Whatever the trending topic of discussion may be, try to plug in your brand’s core messaging and also its features. Same as Dunzo talks about the Whatsapp-Signal privacy dilemma.

 

 

EVENTS DEPICTING MOMENT MARKETING

 

1. NEERAJ CHOPRA WINS GOLD: as Neeraj Chopra won the gold medal for India in JAVELIN throw, various brands took advantage of the moment by congratulating him along with boosting their advertising game. Indigo congratulated Neeraj by giving him a year of free flights, while KFC, SWIGGY and AMUL praised him for his fantastic performance by the following tweets.

 

 

 

2. VACCINATION BEGINS IN INDIA: Recently the government started the vaccination process for all 18 or above age groups.

Durex, one of the leaders of moment marketing perfectly used this opportunity to create an advertisement. The injection in the image depicts a condom, and the brand perfectly adds up their brand message of ‘stay protected’ in the caption. Also, Dominos humorously depicted the necessity of vaccination by showcasing two types of shots, one that we want and the one that we actually need.

3. THE LAUNCH OF MONEY HEIST SEASON 5: The release of Money Heist Season 5 led to a collaboration between Pepsi and Netflix to celebrate the show’s premiere with its latest campaign. In the ad, we can see Tiger Shroff who is on a mission to search for the missing golden cans, released for commemorating season 5 of the show.

Another incident was A Jaipur-based agency announcing an official holiday on the release date appreciating its employees for their dedicated efforts during the pandemic in WFH scenarios, gifting them a much needed ‘Netflix & Chill, Holiday’

 

WHY MOMENT MARKETING PLANS ARE IMPORTANT FOR YOUR BRAND

 

1. CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR ANALYSIS: Modern consumers’ lives are busy where the amount of content produced is way more than any consumer can possibly consume making the consumer prosperous in terms of entertainment avenues. 

This has forced marketers to shift from “Interruption marketing” to “Moment Marketing”. This means that brands and marketers can no longer interrupt the consumers from what they are doing to place their brand or product rather they must grab the attention of consumers by their message.

 

2. EDGE OVER TRADITIONAL MARKETING: Moment marketing wins over traditional interruption marketing because of the following points -

• Unlike a typical TV commercial or skippable YouTube ad, it feels less forced and artificial. 

• It is more real in terms of engagement which builds the virality in the content.

• The chance of being discovered by consumers increases and creates a high recall value of the brand.  

 

WHEN MOMENT MARKETING GOES SOUTH

As Moment Marketing involves leveraging a personality or an event to grab eyeballs and become a part of the conversation, brands must be careful and avoid legal complications when using moment marketing as a strategy.

 

THE SINDHU CASE

• Last year, PV Sindhu made the country proud by bagging the Bronze Medal at Tokyo Olympics 2020. Numerous brands joined in to ride on the trend that Sindhu had created with her win.

• The fact that these brands used PV Sindhu’s images and name on their posts is a clear infringement of the player’s privacy along with flouting the norms of the International Olympic Committee (IOC).

• Sindhu took a lot of these brands to court, for using her name and image for their marketing agendas without proper authorization and sought damages worth Rs 5 crores from each of  these brands

 

 

CONCLUSION

Be it Amul girl’s sense of humour and the way get she gets away with every controversy with her wide-eyes innocence, twirly red polka dot dress or Netflix’s gripping, grilling and grasping reaction on almost everything – these days brands are making a real-time connection with their customers through moment marketing. That is happening because customers are always looking for a particular trend or news on social media and their chances of getting discovered increase, besides creating a high recall.

Although moment marketing is short-lived given that brands can only leverage for a particular time or event which is trending by linking it to their core products and services to induce sales, a person handling this segment who is a fast decision-maker and who knows things (like Tyrion Lannister from Game of Thrones) is of utmost importance. Therefore, clever marketers make the most of this strategy in order to connect to the online and offline audience at a large scale by exhausting lesser resources.

Hence, moment marketing campaigns provide an efficient means to creep into daily conversations of target customers and shape their preferences.

Viral Marketing: How To Master It

 Table of Contents

• Introduction 

• Concept of Viral Marketing

• Types of Viral Marketing 

• Significant examples of Viral Marketing 

• Where to start with Viral Marketing

• Viral Marketing in 2020-21

• Conclusion

In April of 2013, Unilever and its ad agency Ogilvy & Mather Brazil released the "Dove Real Beauty Sketches" campaign to empower women about how they look depicting an FBI-trained sketch artist Gil Zamora sketching two illustrations of women based on the explanation given by them and then another on how they were observed by strangers. When the portraits were placed side-by-side, many notable distinctions could be seen between them. The stranger’s description was more attractive than that of the self-description, conveying that, “You are more beautiful than you think.” 

How do you think they were able to create awe in the customers? Viral Marketing is the answer. Let us read more about this type of marketing strategy. 

Concept of Viral Marketing 

Viral Marketing is a marketing strategy that attempts to spread a product or service from person to person by word-of-mouth or sharing via the internet or social media in the form of memes, shares, likes, forwards etc. As the name itself clarifies how consumers circulate information about a product with other people, much in the same way that a virus mutates from one person to another. 

Viral Marketing is to inspire individuals to share a marketing message to friends, family & other individuals to create exponential growth in the number of its recipients. It generates interest in a brand or product through messages that spread quickly from person to person. The basic theory is that users choose to share the content. 

The concept is often misused or misunderstood as people apply it to any successful enough story without taking into account the word 'viral'.

Advantages of Viral Marketing

Here are some of the advantages of viral marketing: 

1) Lower Cost: Viral Marketing doesn't require much cost and can be developed with minimal cost but there must be easy ideas & proper planning.

2) Reach: It gives a wider reach as people willingly share the content themselves, spreading it at an increasing rate. 

3) Credibility: By sharing a brand on social media ensures an untouched audience regarding the credibility of your product, generating interest among the consumers. 

Disadvantages of Viral Marketing 

Following are the disadvantages of viral marketing that a marketer must keep in mind:

1) Nuisance: Receiving similar messages every day exposes the audience to E-Traffic further creating unnecessary internet noise and the messages are likely to be deleted or remain unread. 

2) Hard To Measure: It is very difficult to measure the worthwhile proposition, so it became quite hectic for managers to analyze the effectiveness of internet marketing campaigns. 

3) Negative Word of Mouth: Sometimes a negative review is enough to hide 100 positive ones, spreading negative buzz.

Types of viral marketing

Source (in the picture) 

There are various types of viral marketing that, if applied correctly, yield results greater than expected.

1) Teaser: A teaser campaign, also known as a pre-launch campaign, is an advertising gimmick involving a few snippets and cryptic messages for anticipation of a larger campaign. These advertisements are called "teasers" or "teaser ads".

2) Word of mouth - Word-of-mouth marketing (WOMM, WOM marketing, also called word of mouth advertising) is actively influenced or encouraged by organizations (e.g. 'seeding' a message in networks rewarding regular consumers to engage in WOM, employing WOM 'agents').

3) Emotional: Emotional marketing is the intentional use of persuasive emotional messages to form a deep connection with the audience toward achieving the desired result. Often, it appeals to a single emotion only.

4) Humour: To make the campaign more impactful and memorable for the audience, humour is used as a tried and tested strategy in marketing the brands.

5) Incentivized: Incentivized advertising is a new ad format that is gaining popularity in digital mobile advertising where the publisher rewards users for watching an ad. An endemic issue here is adverse selection, where reward-seeking users select into incentivized ad placements to obtain rewards.

Significant Examples of Viral Marketing 

Just like Dove, many companies have been able to gain attention through viral marketing by creating unique videos on YouTube, which are then sharing them on Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Twitter etc.

Here are significant examples of Viral Marketing:- 

1) HotMail: In 1996, HotMail was one of the first businesses to become extremely successful by utilising viral marketing techniques by inserting the tagline "Get your free email at HotMail," at the bottom of every email sent out by its users. Hotmail was able to sign up 12 M users in 18 months. At that time, this was the fastest growth by a user based media company. The company now establishes 270,000 new accounts each day. 

2) ALS Ice Bucket Challenge: In 2014, ALS Ice Bucket Challenge was among the most viral marketing challenges in the social networks for creating the awareness of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) or Lou Gehrig's Disease. The challenge was to pour a bucket of ice water over their heads & nominate other friends. Over 2.4 million on Facebook & about 3.7 million on Instagram, huge celebrities & entrepreneurs like Justin Bieber, Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates etc. participated in this challenge.

3) Zoom Virtual Background Challenge: Zoom had introduced a monthly competition for remote workers who could share videos or pictures using zoom’s virtual background feature. A monthly competition with three prizes per month was promoted and this increased its popularity during the COVID pandemic. 

4) Burger King: Burger King has used several marketing campaigns. Its "The Subservient Chicken" campaign, running from 2004 until 2007, was an example of viral or word-of-mouth marketing.

Where to start with viral marketing? 

With the following steps, one can master viral marketing. 

Step #1: Prepare for Growth

A marketer must be ready for explosive growth and visitors to the website and checking web hosting account that can handle a high volume of traffic and that merch accounts are ready for a sudden spike in sales, can assure a smooth transition.

Step #2: Capturing Contact 

Having an objective before spreading the message can help collect emails which is a much more effective means of viral marketing than making sales is. After collecting the emails, marketers have the opportunity to market to them and build a relationship for converting them from email subscribers into paying customers.

Step #3: A Message With a Free Offer

After having an objective for attracting new prospects, a marketer of a firm needs to offer something in exchange for capturing people’s email or contact information. A good approach is giving away something free right away and offering valuable content in the form of follow-up emails.  

Step #4: Offer an Incentive for Spreading the Word

This is where the power of viral marketing really shines. There is a need for a program that automatically emails the offer to the friends and which is set up to reward the person for inviting people. By having an incentive to your customers who are doing the inviting AND to the new invitees, there will be a powerful viral marketing machine in hand that will run with little or no intervention. 

Step #5: Deliver The Message with Multiple Forms of Media

Now, it's time to start attracting traffic to the offer page and a great way to do this is with multiple forms of media such as videos, articles, press releases, and podcasts. After this is complete, the next step would be to immediately make another offer to the new subscriber in return for them inviting friends to take advantage of your free opt-in offer.

Step #6: Explode The Viral Marketing Campaign With a Contest

Offer a great prize to the subscriber who invites the most people. Don’t be afraid to invest in this prize, because the better it is the more effective your viral marketing campaign will be. It might also be a good idea to offer a prize for those who invite the second and third most people.

Viral Marketing in 2020-21

As said earlier, viral marketing is like coronavirus, you think it’s just the small flu but before long, it spreads everywhere and conquers the world. The only difference is that people would love to experience viral marketing, unlike the COVID-19.

With new brands opening daily, all of them have the same motive in today’s scenario, to go viral. Everyone wants their posts to spread like wildfire and reach as many customers as possible through the medium of social media. 

The types of content that will go viral in 2021-2022

1) Puzzles and Riddles: Everybody loves a challenge that keeps them engaged and that’s why they love brain teasers and riddles. Social media has given brands a platform to challenge and reach their audience in a fun way. 

2) Infographics: Minimalism is a concept loved by all. Infographics play a very important role in minimising the use of words and still providing l content that is educational, entertaining and concise at the same time. 

3) Motivational Content: Sometimes there is just a need for extra motivation from someone to pass the day. Content that is providing positivity, quotes of famous people, etc keeps the audience motivated and positive which in return gives visibility to the company. 

4) Personality Quizzes: Questions like “Which Friends character are you?” or “What city should you live in?” create a generous amount of buzz between the people and it's a fun way to engage with the brand.

5) How-To: Creating content that is providing a solution for problems that users might have could help the brand to gain superior organic reach and it could provide a better chance of appearing at the top in SEO results. 

Conclusion

Until some time ago going viral may seem like a dream but the social media platforms and their influences have made this idea & dream a reality now. These opportunities have also brought some challenges with them, in the past, these platforms didn't monitor the content closely but now the content is measured on a variety of elements and you have to perform well in all these to stand out. If your content is unique and is offering some value to the users then not only you can go viral but also create a long relationship with your audience.